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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Identifying And Knocking Out Non-Visual Opsins In The Optic Tectum Of Zebrafish Larvae, Sarah Jarrett
Identifying And Knocking Out Non-Visual Opsins In The Optic Tectum Of Zebrafish Larvae, Sarah Jarrett
Undergraduate Honors Theses
Deep brain photoreceptors (DBPs) are non-visual photoreceptors found in the brains of non-mammalian vertebrates like zebrafish. While using optogenetic techniques in our lab to photo-activate the ear (by expressing the light-gated channel: channelrhodopsin) in efforts of identifying optic tectum (OT) neurons that respond to and integrate auditory and visual stimuli, we found that violet light was able to elicit OT neuronal activity. OT activity was also detected in cases when visual and auditory stimulation was not possible due to removal of the eyes and absence of the exogenously expressed channelrhodopsin, respectively. Analyzing OT single-cell sequencing data of 7day post fertilization …
Phylogeny And Visual System Evolution In Sap Beetles (Coleoptera: Cucujoidea: Nitidulidae), Gareth S. Powell
Phylogeny And Visual System Evolution In Sap Beetles (Coleoptera: Cucujoidea: Nitidulidae), Gareth S. Powell
Theses and Dissertations
Coleoptera is currently the most diverse lineage of life on Earth with more than 400,000 described species. The group also contains unbelievable ecological and morphological variation that has been evolving since the early Carboniferous (>350 MYA). The group provides the perfect playground to test evolutionary hypotheses with large-scale phylogenies. First, a newly developed bioinformatics tool is presented that allows for the critical assessment of the stability of phylogenetic nodes with even minor changes in taxon sampling (i.e. a single taxon jackknifed). The tool, TANOS, is capable of performing tests on large genomics-scale datasets. The case study included is a …