Life Sciences Commons^™

Network Analytics For The Mirna Regulome And Mirna-Disease Interactions, Joseph Jayakar Nalluri

Theses and Dissertations

miRNAs are non-coding RNAs of approx. 22 nucleotides in length that inhibit gene expression at the post-transcriptional level. By virtue of this gene regulation mechanism, miRNAs play a critical role in several biological processes and patho-physiological conditions, including cancers. miRNA behavior is a result of a multi-level complex interaction network involving miRNA-mRNA, TF-miRNA-gene, and miRNA-chemical interactions; hence the precise patterns through which a miRNA regulates a certain disease(s) are still elusive. Herein, I have developed an integrative genomics methods/pipeline to (i) build a miRNA regulomics and data analytics repository, (ii) create/model these interactions into networks and use optimization techniques, motif …

Isolation Of A Novel Phage Otoolekemple52, Thomas O. Raymond

Undergraduate Research Posters

A bacteriophage is a virus capable of infecting bacteria like ubiquitous soil-dwelling genus Bacillus. Within the Bacillus genus, there is the “ACT family” made up of B. thuringiensis, B. cereus, and B. anthracis, which are highly related but with different pathogenic characteristics. Because of this, phages isolated using a species in this group may have a broad host range encompassing several species from Bacillus. Since B. cereus and B. anthracis can result in fatal to mild sickness in humans, the non-pahtogenic B. thuringiensis kurstaki was used to discover and characterize novel phages. The phage OTooleKemple52 was isolated …

Evolution Of Protein Complexes In Bacterial Species, Shwetha Hara Sridhar, Wedad Albalawi, Peter Uetz

Undergraduate Research Posters

Protein complexes are composed of two or more associated polypeptide chains that may have different functions. Protein complexes play a critical role for all processes in life and are considered as highly conserved in evolution. In previous studies, protein complexes from E. coli or Mycoplasma pneumoniae have been characterized experimentally, revealing that a typical bacterial cell has on the order of 500 protein complexes. Using gene homology (orthology), these experimentally-observed complexes can be used to predict protein complexes across many species of bacteria. Surprisingly, the majority of protein complexes is not conserved, demonstrating an unexpected evolutionary flexibility.

The current research …