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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Staphylococcus Aureus Response To Long Chain Antimicrobial Fatty Acids, Benjamin Arsic Sep 2012

Staphylococcus Aureus Response To Long Chain Antimicrobial Fatty Acids, Benjamin Arsic

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Staphylococcus aureus is a common pathogen that has the ability to infect virtually every tissue and organ system of the body. Despite its propensity to cause invasive infection, S. aureus is also a commensal organism, asymptomatically colonizing ~25% of the population. Much research has gone into resolving this paradox, focusing on both human and bacterial factors that may contribute to colonization. Antimicrobial fatty acids present on the skin and in the nasal mucosa are important components of the innate immune system, and thus we undertook to further understand how S. aureus responds to these fatty acids, and how this response …


Protein Body Formation In Stable Transgenic Plants Of Nicotiana Tabacum Expressing Elastin-Like Polypeptide And Hydrophobin Fusion Proteins, Sonia P. Gutierrez Aug 2012

Protein Body Formation In Stable Transgenic Plants Of Nicotiana Tabacum Expressing Elastin-Like Polypeptide And Hydrophobin Fusion Proteins, Sonia P. Gutierrez

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Plants are recognized as an efficient and inexpensive system to produce valuable recombinant proteins. However, the use of plants still faces two main limitations: the low accumulation levels of some recombinant proteins and the lack of efficient protein purification methods. Two fusion partners, elastin-like polypeptides (ELP) and hydrophobin I (HFBI) were found to increase the accumulation of recombinant proteins and induce the formation of protein bodies (PBs) when targeted to the ER in transient expression assays. In this study I examined the effect of these tags in stable transgenic plants of two Nicotiana tabacum cultivars when fused to green fluorescent …


Sequesteration Of Lead, Cadmium And Arsenic By Lactobacillus Species And Detoxication Potential, Marc A. Monachese Aug 2012

Sequesteration Of Lead, Cadmium And Arsenic By Lactobacillus Species And Detoxication Potential, Marc A. Monachese

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Toxic metals are a class of elements with no biological role but with extreme toxicity. On average only 50% of ingested toxins are absorbed into the human body, for reasons still unknown. It was hypothesized that the gut microbiota plays a role in reducing toxin absorbance. The aim of this study was to determine if constituents of the gut, namely Lactobacillus species, are able to sequester arsenic, lead and cadmium from the environment. Lactobacilli were incubated with the metals, both in vitro and with a Caco-2 cell line. Analysis of metal concentrations was conducted to determine if these were reduced …


Colonization Of Zea Mays By The Nitrogen Fixing Bacterium Gluconacetobacter Diazotrophicus, Nikita Eskin Jun 2012

Colonization Of Zea Mays By The Nitrogen Fixing Bacterium Gluconacetobacter Diazotrophicus, Nikita Eskin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

To achieve high yields, corn fields are supplemented with nitrogen fertilizers. Nitrogen fertilizers account for a significant portion of production costs, and are harmful to the environment. Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus, an endophytic nitrogen-fixing bacterium supplies its natural host sugarcane with a significant amount of nitrogen. This study investigated the colonization of G. diazotrophicus in seven different corn genotypes consisting of sweet and grain corn via three different methods of inoculation: soil drench, root dip, and aseptic inoculation. Sucrose content of the corn genotypes and nitrogenase activity were also analysed. Colonization was confirmed by PCR analysis. G. diazotrophicus colonization was detected using …


Restriction Of Hiv-1 Replication By Unique Trim22 Isoforms., Clayton Hattlmann Mar 2012

Restriction Of Hiv-1 Replication By Unique Trim22 Isoforms., Clayton Hattlmann

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Understanding how the immune system reacts to HIV infection and why normal antiviral defenses are insufficient to fight infection is a key step towards creating better therapies. Several interferon-induced proteins, such as the tripartite motif protein TRIM22, are capable of restricting HIV-1 replication; however single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) can dramatically impact the actions of these proteins. While the trim22 gene contains numerous SNPs, no study has addressed how these may affect TRIM22 functions. Here we provide the first direct comparison of two TRIM22 unique isoforms. Through confocal microscopy we observed these isoforms exhibit different patterns of localization. In vitro studies …