Life Sciences Commons^™

Molecular Mechanisms Of Boron Toxicity Tolerance In Plants, Guannan Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Boron toxicity is a worldwide agricultural problem that limits crop productivity and quality. However, our understanding on the genetic responses and adaption mechanisms to boron toxicity in plants is very limited. To address this gap in our knowledge, I compared boron stress-sensitive model, Arabidopsis thaliana and its stress-adapted relative Schrenkiella parvula to study how plants respond and adapt to excess boron at physiological, genomic, transcriptomic, and metabolic levels.

The overall project goal involved integration of multi-omics datasets to develop genome to phenome interpretations. To achieve this, I developed a python package, GOMCL, to facilitate the extraction of biologically meaningful information …

Quantifying Structure And Variation In Complex Phylogenetic Data, Genevieve Geraldine Mount

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Identifying the source and structure of variation in nature is crucial to understanding fundamental aspects of evolution. Despite a recent plethora of genetic and morphological data, many interesting questions about the relationships between different groups remain unresolved. My dissertation evaluates three approaches for identifying and quantifying the variation within phylogenetic datasets. Characterizing variation within datasets and across analytical methods gives insight into biologically interesting characters, unusual evolutionary processes, and areas for model improvement.

Network-based community detection approaches offer a powerful tool to describe variation in phylogenetic signal across the genome (i.e., gene tree variation). In Chapter 2, I investigate the …

The Effects Of Radical Containing Combustion Derived Particulate Matter In Adult Mouse Respiratory System, Jeffrey Harding

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Epidemiological data associates high levels of combustion-derived particulate matter (PM) with deleterious respiratory outcomes, but the mechanism underlying those outcomes remains elusive. It has been acknowledged by the World Health Organization that PM exposure contributes to more than 4.2 million all-cause mortalities worldwide each year. Current literature demonstrates that PM exacerbates respiratory diseases, impairs lung function, results in chronic respiratory illnesses, and is associated with increased mortality. The proposed mechanisms revolve around oxidative stress and inflammation promoting pulmonary physiological remodeling. Our data demonstrate that environmentally persistent free radicals (EPFRs) stabilized on the surface of PM are capable of inducing oxidative …

Metabolic Network Analysis Of Filamentous Cyanobacteria, Daniel Alexis Norena-Caro

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Cyanobacteria were the first organisms to use oxygenic photosynthesis, converting CO₂ into useful organic chemicals. However, the chemical industry has historically relied on fossil raw materials to produce organic precursors, which has contributed to global warming. Thus, cyanobacteria have emerged as sustainable stakeholders for biotechnological production. The filamentous cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. UTEX 2576 can metabolize multiple sources of Nitrogen and was studied as a platform for biotechnological production of high-value chemicals (i.e., pigments, antioxidants, vitamins and secondary metabolites). From a Chemical engineering perspective, the biomass generation in this organism was thoroughly studied by interpreting the cell as a microbial …