Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Design, Synthesis, And Evaluation Of Molecular Inhibitors For Biologically Relevant Enzymes, Sarah Emma St. John

Open Access Dissertations

The work in this thesis details the design, synthesis, and biological evaluation of molecular inhibitors for the inhibition of biologically relevant enzymes. The first three chapters of this thesis concern the polyphenol resveratrol and its inhibition of the quinone reductase 2 (QR2) enzyme. The work on this subject resulted in the complete design, synthesis, biological and structural evaluation of a second generation library of resveratrol analogues. From this work we identified a novel resveratrol analogue that inhibits QR2 in a previously unknown binding orientation. The fourth chapter of this thesis details the de novo design of molecules for the inhibition …

Gas-Phase Covalent And Non-Covalent Ion/Ion Chemistry Of Biological Macromolecules, John Robert Stutzman

Open Access Dissertations

Gas-phase ion/ion chemistry involves the interaction of oppositely charged ions inside of the mass spectrometer. During this gas-phase chemistry, particle transfer (i.e., proton and electron) or synthesis can occur at rapid reaction rates. Particle transfer represents a mature area of ion/ion chemistry, while selective covalent modification represents a fairly new area of gas-phase chemistry. Gas-phase covalent chemistry is based on traditional solution phase organic chemistry.

The work demonstrated in this dissertation greatly involves gas-phase covalent and non-covalent Schiff base chemistry on peptide and protein ions. The reagent dianion, 4-formyl 1,3-benzene disulfonic acid, has been used to covalently modify unprotonated primary …

Estimation Of Variation For High-Throughput Molecular Biological Experiments With Small Sample Size, Danni Yu

Open Access Dissertations

Motivation: In the quantification of molecular components, a large variation can affect and even potentially mislead the biological conclusions. Meanwhile, the high-throughput experiments often involve a small number of samples due to the limitation of cost and time. In such cases, the stochastic information may dominate the outcome of an experiment because there may not be enough samples to present the true biological information. It is challenging to distinguish the changes in phenotype from the stochastic variation.

Methods: Since the biological molecules have been quantified with different technologies, different statistical methods are required. Focusing on three types of important high-throughput …

Fate Of 17Α-Estradiol, 17Β-Estradiol, And Estrone In Agricultural Soils And Sediments, Michael L. Mashtare Jr

Open Access Dissertations

The shift to concentrated animal production facilities and increasing rural-urban migration has increased the localized land application of nearly 1 billion tons of manure and biosolids annually. Although these applications provide nutrients and contribute to soil tilth, they also serve as a source for an estimated 49 tons of the natural manure-borne estrogens, 17α-estradiol (17α-E2), 17β-estradiol (17β-E2), and estrone (E1). While these estrogens are critical to endocrine systems, the low concentrations observed in the environment can disrupt endocrine function in non-target organisms, e.g., altering secondary sex characteristics which can lead to changes in wildlife communities.

Research presented here focuses on …