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Softening And Cross-Susceptibility: Exposure To Heat And Desiccation Reduces Future Stress Tolerance In An Insect, Lauren Harter

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

The frequency and duration of environmental stressors, such as heat waves and drought, will continue to grow due to ongoing climate change, thereby increasing the likelihood that organisms will experience stressors consecutively. Exposure to one stressor can improve or impair future tolerance to the same stressor (i.e., hardening or softening, respectively), or enhance or reduce future tolerance to a different stressor (i.e., cross-protection or cross-susceptibility, respectively). Understanding whether stress improves or impairs animals’ abilities to withstand future stressors is critical for determining the physiological sensitivity of animals to ongoing climate change. Here, I evaluated the responses to consecutive heat and …

Plasticity In Response To Temperature Magnitude And Variation---From Life History To Thermal Tolerance And Coloration, Austin Rex Hoffman

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Warming associated with climate change has many direct and downstream effects on animals. For example, warmer developmental temperatures can improve heat tolerance and reduce insect melanization, which is related to coloration, thermoregulation, immunity, desiccation resistance, and potentially life-history traits, such as investment into reproduction and dispersal. Increased temperature variation is also a feature of climate change, and it may have a larger impact on animals than warming. However, I lack insight into the combined effects of temperature magnitude and variability on important traits of life history, thermal tolerance, and coloration. Thus, I integrated temperature variation into thermal performance using a …

The Effect Of Breathing Hypoxic Gas (15% Fio2) On Physiological And Behavioral Outcomes During Simulated Driving In Healthy Subjects, Jaspreet Kaur, Lebbathana Manokaran, Michael Thynne, Mirza M.F. Subhan

School of Biomedical Sciences

Hypoxia is mainly caused by cardiopulmonary disease or high-altitude exposure. We used a driving simulator to investigate whether breathing hypoxic gas influences driving behaviors in healthy subjects. Fifty-two healthy subjects were recruited in this study, approved by the Science and Engineering Ethical Committee. During simulated driving experiments, driving behaviors, breathing frequency, oxygen saturation (SpO 2 ), and heart rate variability (HRV) were analyzed. Each subject had four driving sessions; a 10-min practice and three 20-min randomized interventions: normoxic room air (21% FIO 2 ) and medical air (21% FIO 2 ) and hypoxic air (equal to 15% FIO 2 ), …

Short- And Midterm Outcomes Of Off- And On-Pump Coronary Artery Bypass In Patients With A Mean Age Of 65 Or More: Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Jake Trotman, Toluwalase Eboka, Neil Smart, Nicola King

School of Biomedical Sciences

Background. Advancing age is a nonmodifiable risk factor for the development of coronary artery disease. Furthermore, patients >65 years old are considered at high risk for coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG). The aim of this study was to investigate whether there were any differences in clinical outcomes for patients with a mean age ≥65 undergoing CABG on or off pump. Methods. Systematic searches were conducted in EMBASE, PubMed, Web of Science, and Cochrane Central Registry of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL). The key search terms used were "cardiopulmonary bypass"OR "On pump"AND "off pump"OR "beating heart"AND "coronary artery bypass grafting"OR "CABG"AND "age."This was …

Editorial: Bacteriocins And Other Ribosomally Synthesised And Post-Translationally Modified Peptides (Ripps) As Modulators Of The Microbiome, Harsh Mathur, Des Field, Caitriona Guinane, Maire Begley, Mathew Upton, Hilario C. Mantovani, Paul D. Cotter

School of Biomedical Sciences

No abstract provided.

Double Testing With Lateral Flow Antigen Test Devices For Covid-19: Does A Second Test In Quick Succession Add Value?, Matthias E Futschik, Sarah A Tunkel, Elena Turek, David Chapman, Zareen Thorlu-Bangura, Raghavendran Kulasegaran-Shylini, Edward Blandford, Andrew Dodgson, Paul E Klapper, Malur Sudhanva, Derrick Crook, John Bell, Susan Hopkins, Tim Peto, Tom Fowler

School of Biomedical Sciences

BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES: We investigated if performing two lateral flow device (LFD) tests, LFD2 immediately after LFD1, could improve diagnostic sensitivity or specificity for detecting severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antigen.

STUDY DESIGN: Individuals aged ≥16 years attending UK community testing sites (February-May 2021) performed two successive LFD tests and provided a nose-and-throat sample for a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. Using the PCR result as the reference diagnosis, we assessed whether improvements could be achieved in sensitivity (by counting a positive result in either LFD as a positive overall test result) or specificity (by using LFD2 as confirmatory test). …

Rapid Antigen Testing For Sars-Cov-2 By Lateral Flow Assay: A Field Evaluation Of Self- And Professional Testing At Uk Community Testing Sites, Matthias E Futschik, Samuel Johnson, Elena Turek, David Chapman, Simon Carr, Zareen Thorlu-Bangura, Paul E Klapper, Malur Sudhanva, Andrew Dodgson, Joanna R Cole-Hamilton, Nick Germanacos, Raghavendran Kulasegaran-Shylini, Edward Blandford, Sarah Tunkel, Timothy Peto, Susan Hopkins, Tom Fowler

School of Biomedical Sciences

BACKGROUND: The advent of lateral flow devices (LFDs) for SARS-CoV-2 detection enabled widespread use of rapid self-tests during the pandemic. While self-testing using LFDs is now common, whether self-testing provides comparable performance to professional testing was a key question that remained important for pandemic planning.

METHODS: Three prospective multi-centre studies were conducted to compare the performance of self- and professional testing using LFDs. Participants tested themselves or were tested by trained (professional) testers at community testing sites in the UK. Corresponding qRT-PCR test results served as reference standard. The performance of Innova, Orient Gene and SureScreen LFDs by users (self) …

Loss Of The Scavenger Receptor Marco Results In Uncontrolled Vomocytosis Of Fungi From Macrophages, Chinaemerem U. Onyishi, Yusun Jeon, Gyorgy Fejer, Subhankar Mukhopadhyay, Siamon Gordon, Robin C. May

School of Biomedical Sciences

Vomocytosis, also known as nonlytic exocytosis, is a process whereby fully phagocytosed microbes are expelled from phagocytes without discernible damage to either the phagocyte or microbe. Although this phenomenon was first described in the opportunistic fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans in 2006, to date, mechanistic studies have been hampered by an inability to reliably stimulate or inhibit vomocytosis. Here we present the fortuitous discovery that macrophages lacking the scavenger receptor MAcrophage Receptor with COllagenous domain (MARCO), exhibit near-total vomocytosis of internalised cryptococci within a few hours of infection. Marco^−/− macrophages also showed elevated vomocytosis of a yeast-locked C. albicans strain, …

A Simple, Inexpensive Alkaline Method For Bacterial Dna Extraction From Environmental Samples For Pcr Surveillance And Microbiome Analyses, Abdulkarim Shwani, Bin Zuo, Adnan Alrubaye, Jiangchao Zhao, Douglas D. Rhoads

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

DNA extraction for downstream molecular diagnostic applications can be an expensive, time-consuming process. We devised a method to quickly extract total bacterial DNA from environmental samples based on the sodium hydroxide lysis of cells with or without capture by magnetic beads for subsequent PCR or quantitative PCR. The final DNA extraction method using NaOH is extremely low-cost and can be completed in as little as 10 min at room temperature with dilution, or the DNA can be further purified using silica-coated paramagnetic beads. NaOH extraction was effective for Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria in samples from air, soil, sewage, food, laboratory …

Assessment Of The Correlation Between Disease Activity And Serum Biomarker Anti-Mcv And Il6 In Iraqi Patients With Rheumatoid Arthritis, Dania A. Ali, Muhammad M. Al-Anee, Nizar Al-Anee, Adnan A. Alrubaye

Poultry Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease characterized by autoantibodies against citrullinated antigens. The anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide test is commonly used to diagnose rheumatoid arthritis, whereas the anti-mutated citrullinated vimentin is another anti-citrullinated antibody that reacts with mutated citrullinated vimentin.  Anti-mutated citrullinated vimentin antibodies have been suggested as a superior early arthritis diagnostic marker.

Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the levels of IL6 and anti-mutated citrullinated vimentin biomarkers as well as to determine their potential correlation with disease activity in rheumatoid arthritis Iraqi patients.

Methods: The study included an overall sample of 120 individuals who were recruited from the …

Intrinsic Lipid Curvature And Bilayer Elasticity As Regulators Of Channel Function: A Comparative Single-Molecule Study, Mohammad Ashrafuzzaman, Roger E. Koeppe Ii, Olaf S. Andersen

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications and Presentations

Perturbations in bilayer material properties (thickness, lipid intrinsic curvature and elastic moduli) modulate the free energy difference between different membrane protein conformations, thereby leading to changes in the conformational preferences of bilayer-spanning proteins. To further explore the relative importance of curvature and elasticity in determining the changes in bilayer properties that underlie the modulation of channel function, we investigated how the micelle-forming amphiphiles Triton X-100, reduced Triton X-100 and the H_II lipid phase promoter capsaicin modulate the function of alamethicin and gramicidin channels. Whether the amphiphile-induced changes in intrinsic curvature were negative or positive, amphiphile addition increased gramicidin channel …