Genetics and Genomics Commons^™

Crispr Technology As An Antiviral In Dsdna And Ssrna Viruses, Cathryn Mayes

Theses & Dissertations

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the necessity of emergency response and pandemic preparedness, especially for emerging viral threats. Currently, virus-specific vaccines and antivirals are the primary tools to combat viral diseases; however, broad-spectrum antivirals that target more than one virus species could provide additional protection from emerging and re-emerging viral diseases (Andersen et al. 2020; Zhu et al. 2015; Hickman et al. 2022).

Clustered regulatory interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-associated endonucleases have become recently utilized as potential antiviral strategies due to their high specificity, efficacy, and versatility (Najafi et al. 2022). While CRISPR-based antivirals have previously been used to target specific …

Multistrain Hiv-1 Elimination: A Crispr-Cas9 And Theranostics-Based Approach, Jonathan Herskovitz

Theses & Dissertations

A critical barrier to achieving a functional cure for infection by human immunodeficiency virus type one (HIV-1) rests in the presence of latent proviral DNA integrated in the nuclei of host CD4+ T cells and mononuclear phagocytes. Accordingly, HIV-1-infected patients must adhere to lifelong regimens of antiretroviral therapy (ART) to prevent viral rebound, CD4+ T cell decline, and progression to acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Gene editing using clustered regularly interspersed short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-Cas9 technology stands as one means to inactivate integrated proviral DNA. We devised a mosaic gRNA CRISPR-Cas9 system- TatDE- that targets viral transcriptional regulator genes tat / …

Genomic And Transcriptomic Alterations In Metabolic Regulators And Implications For Anti-Tumoral Immune Response, Ryan J. King

Theses & Dissertations

Metabolic and immune alterations are ubiquitous hallmarks of cancer that are established during the foundational mutations and are further selected upon to generate highly aggressive tumors. Recent evidence suggests that cancer cells employ an altered metabolism to induce immune evasion. To further discover the relationship between metabolism and immunity in cancer, this thesis aimed to discover potential candidates of interest by first examining the mucin family for differences, as they exert a wide range of activities in cancer, including altered metabolism and immune alterations. Unique differences lead to further profiling in pancreatic and esophageal cancer. In pancreatic cancer, CD73 was …

Defining The Role Of Interferon Regulatory Factor 4 In Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia., Vipul Shukla

Theses & Dissertations

Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL) represents the most common adult leukemia in the Western hemisphere. Despite considerable progress in our current understanding of CLL, this disease remains incurable and the molecular events underlying the complex pathogenesis of CLL are not fully elucidated. Interferon Regulatory Factor 4 (IRF4) belongs to the IRF superfamily of transcription factors that has been shown to play critical roles at multiple stages of B cell development. Interestingly, a Genome Wide Association Study identified Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) mediated IRF4 down regulation, as a major predisposing genetic event during the development of CLL. However, whether low levels of …