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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Identification And Characterization Of Genetic Factors Involved In Candida-Bacterial Interactions, Sean J. Fox Dec 2013

Identification And Characterization Of Genetic Factors Involved In Candida-Bacterial Interactions, Sean J. Fox

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Throughout existence, fungi and bacteria have long shared ecological niches and thus engage in numerous interactions to mutually enhance survival or antagonistically gain competitive advantages. Of importance to human health are those interactions that involve bacteria with the opportunistic fungi, Candida albicans. An important virulence factor of C. albicans is the ability to control morphology, which allows the transition between yeast, pseudohyphal, and hyphal phenotypes. Morphological control in C. albicans is governed by quorum sensing and the secreted autoregulatory molecule farnesol. Quorum sensing allows individual cells to sense the environment and respond as a group. Bacteria also use quorum …


Genetic Imbalances In Endometriosis Detected By Oligonucleotide-Array Based Comparative Genomic Hybridization, Natalie Burke May 2013

Genetic Imbalances In Endometriosis Detected By Oligonucleotide-Array Based Comparative Genomic Hybridization, Natalie Burke

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Endometriosis is one of the most common gynecological diseases as it is thought to affect up to 15% of the female population. Characterized by the growth and proliferation of endometrial tissue outside of the uterine cavity, it is a complex condition with varying degrees of severity and can affect multiple regions of the body with symptoms ranging from a total lack of symptoms to debilitating pain and infertility. The most accepted theory of how endometriosis initiates is that of retrograde menstruation; however, approximately 90% of women with unobstructed fallopian tubes are thought to have some menstrual debris in the peritoneal …


Assortative Mating In Ixodes Scapularis (Acari: Ixodidae) Ticks? And Ixodes Scapularis Infest Male Deer More Often Than Female Deer At Savannah River Site, (Aiken, Sc), Jenny Dickson Apr 2013

Assortative Mating In Ixodes Scapularis (Acari: Ixodidae) Ticks? And Ixodes Scapularis Infest Male Deer More Often Than Female Deer At Savannah River Site, (Aiken, Sc), Jenny Dickson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this study we explored the hypothesis that the mitochondrial genetic diversity observed in Ixodes Scapularis ticks in the Southeastern United States is maintained through assortative mating. The study of 319 couples of ticks collected in copula from deer at the Savannah River Site (Aiken, SC) showed that ticks assigned to mitochondrial (12SrDNA and d-loop genes) phylogenetic monophyletic clades do not chose their mating partner based on genetic similarity or genetic diversity. The genetic composition of couples did not differ significantly from random choice. Our data indicate that if genetic diversity is maintained in this tick population, this cannot be …


Variation In Egg Components: A Study Of Maternal Investment And Resource Partitioning In The Nesting Loggerhead Sea Turtle; Estimating Genic Variation And Mapping Genetic Lineage Of A Rare Captive Helodermatid Population: Heloderma Horridum Charlesbogerti, Ketan V. Patel Apr 2013

Variation In Egg Components: A Study Of Maternal Investment And Resource Partitioning In The Nesting Loggerhead Sea Turtle; Estimating Genic Variation And Mapping Genetic Lineage Of A Rare Captive Helodermatid Population: Heloderma Horridum Charlesbogerti, Ketan V. Patel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Loggerhead sea turtles have the highest egg yields of any oviparous non-avian reptiles. Blood urea nitrogen levels increased as the season progressed while total blood albumen and total protein levels decreased. Wet egg mass (H = 1.7719 df = 2 p = 0.0375*) and albumen mass (H = 6.0507 df = 2 p = 0.0485*) significantly decreased across the nesting season however, wet yolk did not. Analysis of dried egg components showed that dry yolk and albumen did not differ across the nesting season. In addition on no seasonal change in dried egg components, hatchling size was conserved across the …


Novel Functions For Neuronal Rna Processing Bodies In The Control Of Axon Terminal Growth In Drosophila Melanogaster, Sarala Joshi Pradhan Jan 2013

Novel Functions For Neuronal Rna Processing Bodies In The Control Of Axon Terminal Growth In Drosophila Melanogaster, Sarala Joshi Pradhan

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis we first characterized neuronal functions for HPat/Pat1, a core component of RNA processing bodies or "P bodies". We show that hpat mutants exhibit a strong synaptic hyperplasia at the developing and acutely stimulated Drosophila larval neuromuscular junctions (NMJs). The synaptic defects observed in hpat mutants are associated with rearrangement of the axonal microtubule cytoskeleton suggesting that HPat negatively regulates presynaptic microtubule-based growth during NMJ development. Interestingly, we also found that both pre-and postsynaptic HPat expression controlled rapid axon terminal growth in response to acute spaced synaptic stimulation. We also demonstrate that HPat interacts genetically with the catalytic …


Isolation And Characterization Of A Full Length Retrotransposon: Cr1, Cassandra Michelle Weason Jan 2013

Isolation And Characterization Of A Full Length Retrotransposon: Cr1, Cassandra Michelle Weason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Transposable elements (TE) have been found in all genomes and have clearly had a major impact on genomic evolution. The described research takes advantage of an abundant transposable element present in the genomes of Anseriformes, called Chicken Repeat 1 (CR1). Previous studies in Anseriformes suggest that CR1 is presently active in recent evolutionary time (St. John, 2004). A fully functional CR1 element itself is approximately 4.5kb long (Kajikawa, 1997), where almost all inserts are truncated at the 5' end. Because of this, it has been a challenge to isolate a full length, active element. In this study, two CR1 sequences …


The Tick Genus Amblyomma In Africa: Phylogeny And Mutilocus Dna Barcoding, Omobolanle Kushimo Jan 2013

The Tick Genus Amblyomma In Africa: Phylogeny And Mutilocus Dna Barcoding, Omobolanle Kushimo

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The tick genus Amblyomma includes approximately 130 species, 28 of which are found on the African continent and/ or in Madagascar. In order to understand the evolutionary phylogeography of the genus, it is necessary to gain a better understanding of the relationships between African taxa. Therefore, the main goals of this work were to, (1) reconstruct the phylogenetic relationships of the African Amblyomma available to us and (2) test markers for their usefulness as barcoding tools to link unknown immature specimens to their corresponding adults. The mitochondrial gene markers used in this study (12SrDNA and COI) did not resolve the …