Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Medicine and Health Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 8 of 8

Full-Text Articles in Medicine and Health Sciences

Bioinformatic Analysis Predicts Microglial Dysfunction In Murine Aging, Amadu Idrisa Jalloh Mar 2023

Bioinformatic Analysis Predicts Microglial Dysfunction In Murine Aging, Amadu Idrisa Jalloh

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Age-related disease is a growing concern as the global geriatric population increases. Neurodegenerative diseases scale unfavorably in prevalence with aging and inflict disastrous consequences to human health and well-being. These disorders are challenging to investigate because they arise from complex molecular origins. The neuroimmune system is a common factor among these diseases and microglia play an important role in maintaining homeostasis in the central nervous system. Aging progressively impairs microglia by decreasing their ability to adapt and respond to noxious environmental stimuli or injury. Microglial dysfunction aggravates neurodegenerative pathology when microglia are unable to regulate neuroinflammation effectively. We investigated aging …


Small Heat Shock Protein 22 Preserves Neuronal Function In A Murine Model Of Tauopathy, Santiago Rodriguez Ospina Mar 2022

Small Heat Shock Protein 22 Preserves Neuronal Function In A Murine Model Of Tauopathy, Santiago Rodriguez Ospina

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Proteinopathies is a family of diseases associated with the pathological aggregation of protein. There are a multitude of proteinopathies, like tauopathy and synucleinopathy that contribute to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Creutzfeldt-Jakob, Pick’s disease, Frontotemporal dementia, and Parkinson’s disease (PD). Currently, one focus of research in the field is mitigating aggregation-prone proteins contributing to disease state. One method of targeting aggregation is the use of chaperones. Chaperones are molecular machinery that help maintain homeostasis in the cells, through various roles and mechanisms, one of those methods is to regulate protein aggregation. Chaperones can achieve this by affecting protein-protein interactions, …


Small Heat Shock Protein 22 Improves Cognition And Learning In The Tauopathic Brain, Santiago Rodriguez Ospina, Danielle M. Blazier, Marangelie Criado-Marrero, Lauren A. Gould, Niad T. Gebru, David Beaulieu-Abdelahad, Xinming Wang, Elizabeth Remily-Wood, Dale Chaput, Stanley Stevens Jr., Vladimir N. Uversky, Paula C. Bickford, Chad Anthony Dickey, Laura J. Blair Jan 2022

Small Heat Shock Protein 22 Improves Cognition And Learning In The Tauopathic Brain, Santiago Rodriguez Ospina, Danielle M. Blazier, Marangelie Criado-Marrero, Lauren A. Gould, Niad T. Gebru, David Beaulieu-Abdelahad, Xinming Wang, Elizabeth Remily-Wood, Dale Chaput, Stanley Stevens Jr., Vladimir N. Uversky, Paula C. Bickford, Chad Anthony Dickey, Laura J. Blair

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

The microtubule-associated protein tau pathologically accumulates and aggregates in Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and other tauopathies, leading to cognitive dysfunction and neuronal loss. Molecular chaperones, like small heat-shock proteins (sHsps), can help deter the accumulation of misfolded proteins, such as tau. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the overexpression of wild-type Hsp22 (wtHsp22) and its phosphomimetic (S24,57D) Hsp22 mutant (mtHsp22) could slow tau accumulation and preserve memory in a murine model of tauopathy, rTg4510. Our results show that Hsp22 protected against deficits in synaptic plasticity and cognition in the tauopathic brain. However, we did not detect a significant change in tau …


On The Need To Develop Guidelines For Characterizing And Reporting Intrinsic Disorder In Proteins, Michael Vincent, Vladimir N. Uversky, Santiago Schnell Jan 2019

On The Need To Develop Guidelines For Characterizing And Reporting Intrinsic Disorder In Proteins, Michael Vincent, Vladimir N. Uversky, Santiago Schnell

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Since the early 2000s, numerous computational tools have been created and used to predict intrinsic disorder in proteins. At present, the output from these algorithms is difficult to interpret in the absence of standards or references for comparison. There are many reasons to establish a set of standard-based guidelines to evaluate computational protein disorder predictions. This viewpoint explores a handful of these reasons, including standardizing nomenclature to improve communication, rigor and reproducibility, and making it easier for newcomers to enter the field. An approach for reporting predicted disorder in single proteins with respect to whole proteomes is discussed. The suggestions …


Neural Mechanisms Of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation In The Treatment Of Tinnitus, Andrea S. Lowe Apr 2018

Neural Mechanisms Of Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation In The Treatment Of Tinnitus, Andrea S. Lowe

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Millions of people suffer from tinnitus, a disorder for which there is currently no effective treatment or cure. My dissertation work provides insight into the neural correlates of this pervasive hearing disorder and examines how a newly emerging therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), affects the central auditory system in the generation of the tinnitus percept. This work has a multifold focus of: i) developing and modeling the function of a miniature magnetic coil that can be used for TMS in rodents, ii) establishing a reliable mouse model of tinnitus that can be used for assessing TMS treatment-induced changes, iii) measuring …


Mass-Spectrometry Based Proteomics Of Age-Related Changes In Murine Microglia, Antwoine Flowers Mar 2017

Mass-Spectrometry Based Proteomics Of Age-Related Changes In Murine Microglia, Antwoine Flowers

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The last century has seen a steady increase in the extension of the average lifespan. This has concomitantly produced higher incidences of age-related chronic degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Age is the single greatest risk factor for the development of not just these degenerative conditions but cancer as well. The aged niche undergoes a number of maladaptive changes that allow underlying conditions to present and progress. Exactly which changes, contribute to the progression of which disease is currently an area of intense study. However, these answers often present therapeutic targets for disease prevention. Age is characterized by a …


Molecular And Phenotypic Studies Validating The Role Of The Ecdysone Receptor In The Human Parasite Brugia Malayi, Amruta Mhashilkar Nov 2015

Molecular And Phenotypic Studies Validating The Role Of The Ecdysone Receptor In The Human Parasite Brugia Malayi, Amruta Mhashilkar

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Filariasis and onchocerciasis are debilitating diseases affecting 120 million people globally. The massive socio-economic impact of these diseases energized the international community to declare a goal of eliminating filariasis 2020. This resulted in a dramatic increase in the efforts to eliminate filariasis and onchocerciasis, employing a strategy of mass drug administration (MDA). However, these programs rely upon the small arsenal of drugs. This leaves these programs vulnerable to failure in the face of developing resistance and local intolerance to the current drug regimens. Thus, new drugs against these infections are critically needed. A homologue of the ecdysone receptor (EcR), a …


Extracting Structural Information From Charge-State Distributions Of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins By Non-Denaturing Electrospray-Ionization Mass Spectrometry, Lorenzo Testa, Stefania Brocca, Carlo Santambrogio, Annalisa D'Urzo, Johnny Habchi, Sonia Longhi, Vladimir N. Uversky, Rita Grandori Jan 2013

Extracting Structural Information From Charge-State Distributions Of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins By Non-Denaturing Electrospray-Ionization Mass Spectrometry, Lorenzo Testa, Stefania Brocca, Carlo Santambrogio, Annalisa D'Urzo, Johnny Habchi, Sonia Longhi, Vladimir N. Uversky, Rita Grandori

Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) exert key biological functions but tend to escape identification and characterization due to their high structural dynamics and heterogeneity. The possibility to dissect conformational ensembles by electrospray-ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) offers an attracting possibility to develop a signature for this class of proteins based on their peculiar ionization behavior. This review summarizes available data on charge-state distributions (CSDs) obtained for IDPs by non-denaturing ESI-MS, with reference to globular or chemically denatured proteins. The results illustrate the contributions that direct ESI-MS analysis can give to the identification of new putative IDPs and to their conformational investigation.