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Research Methods in Life Sciences Commons

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Doctoral Dissertations

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Monitoring Mammals At Multiple Scales: Case Studies From Carnivore Communities, Kadambari Devarajan Oct 2021

Monitoring Mammals At Multiple Scales: Case Studies From Carnivore Communities, Kadambari Devarajan

Doctoral Dissertations

Carnivores are distributed widely and threatened by habitat loss, poaching, climate change, and disease. They are considered integral to ecosystem function through their direct and indirect interactions with species at different trophic levels. Given the importance of carnivores, it is of high conservation priority to understand the processes driving carnivore assemblages in different systems. It is thus essential to determine the abiotic and biotic drivers of carnivore community composition at different spatial scales and address the following questions: (i) What factors influence carnivore community composition and diversity? (ii) How do the factors influencing carnivore communities vary across spatial and temporal …


Elucidating Mechanisms Of Metastasis With Implantable Biomaterial Niches, Ryan Adam Carpenter Jul 2020

Elucidating Mechanisms Of Metastasis With Implantable Biomaterial Niches, Ryan Adam Carpenter

Doctoral Dissertations

Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer related deaths, yet it remains the most poorly understood aspect of tumor biology. This can be attributed to the lack of relevant experimental models that can recapitulate the complex and lengthy progression of metastatic relapse observed in patients. Mouse models have been widely used to study cancer, however they are critically limited to study metastasis. Most models generate aggressive metastases in the lung without the use of unique cell lines or specialized injection techniques. This limits the ability to study disseminated tumor cells (DTCs) in other relevant metastasis prone tissues. Prolonged observation of …


Tpr-Containing Proteins Control Protein Organization And Homeostasis For The Endoplasmic Reticulum, Jill Bradley-Graham Mar 2020

Tpr-Containing Proteins Control Protein Organization And Homeostasis For The Endoplasmic Reticulum, Jill Bradley-Graham

Doctoral Dissertations

The endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is a complex, multifunctional organelle comprised of a continuous membrane and lumen that is organized into several functional regions. It plays various roles including protein translocation, folding, quality control, secretion, calcium signaling, and lipid biogenesis. Cellular protein homeostasis is maintained by a complicated chaperone network, and the largest functional family within this network consists of proteins containing tetratricopeptide repeats (TPRs). TPRs are well-studied structural motifs that mediate intermolecular protein-protein interactions, supporting interactions with a wide range of ligands or substrates. Nine TPR-containing proteins have been shown to localize to the ER and control protein organization and …


Environmental Risk Factors For Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Triclosan And Other Consumer Antimicrobials, Katherine Z. Sanidad Oct 2019

Environmental Risk Factors For Inflammatory Bowel Disease: Triclosan And Other Consumer Antimicrobials, Katherine Z. Sanidad

Doctoral Dissertations

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) has become a serious health problem since the incidence and prevalence of IBD has dramatically increased throughout the world. There is evidence that environmental factors are primarily responsible for the increase of IBD, therefore, it is important to identify novel environmental risk factors to reduce the risk of IBD and its associated diseases. Antimicrobials used in consumer products might serve as environmental risk factors for IBD and its associated diseases. Triclosan (TCS), triclocarban (TCC), benzalkonium chloride (BAC), benzethonium chloride (BET), and chloroxylenol (PCMX) are widely used antimicrobial ingredients in consumer products and are ubiquitous contaminants in …


Drivers And Consequences Of Carbon Use Efficiency - And Its Measurement In Soil, Grace Pold Oct 2019

Drivers And Consequences Of Carbon Use Efficiency - And Its Measurement In Soil, Grace Pold

Doctoral Dissertations

Soils serve as massive carbon sinks, but their ability to continue this ecological service is contingent on how the resident soil microbial community will respond to the ongoing climate crisis. One key dimension of the microbial response to warming is its carbon use efficiency (CUE), or the fraction of carbon taken up by an organism which is allocated to growth rather than respiration. However, the scientific community is still in the early stages of understanding the drivers, consequences - and even accurate measurements of - CUE. In this dissertation, I first quantified the variability of CUE and its responsiveness to …


Applications Of Drosophila Melanogaster In Food Science Research, Phoebe Beverly Chen Nov 2018

Applications Of Drosophila Melanogaster In Food Science Research, Phoebe Beverly Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

Drosophila melanogaster is a versatile model organism that provides several unique features, such as highly conserved disease pathways with humans as well as availability of environmental and genetic manipulations. Meanwhile, there is increasing interest in the potential role of bioactive food components, epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), in metabolic research. However, there is limited knowledge on the sex-dependent effects of EGCG and CLA on energy metabolism. In this study, Drosophila melanogaster was used to investigate the sex-dependent effects of EGCG and CLA with respect to energy metabolism, including body fat, locomotion, and their key metabolic regulators. We …