Life Sciences Commons^™

A Multidomain Enzyme, With Glycerol-3-Phosphate Dehydrogenase And Phosphatase Activities, Is Involved In A Chloroplastic Pathway For Glycerol Synthesis In Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii, Daniela Morales-Sánchez, Yeongho Kim, Ee Leng Terng, Laura Peterson, Heriberto D. Cerutti

Center for Plant Science Innovation: Faculty Publications

Understanding the unique features of algal metabolism may be necessary to realize the full potential of algae as feedstock for the production of biofuels and biomaterials. Under nitrogen deprivation, the green alga C. reinhardtii showed substantial triacylglycerol (TAG) accumulation and up-regulation of a gene, GPD2, encoding a multidomain enzyme with a putative phosphoserine phosphatase (PSP) motif fused to glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GPD) domains. Canonical GPD enzymes catalyze the synthesis of glycerol-3-phosphate (G3P) by reduction of dihydroxyacetone phosphate (DHAP). G3P forms the backbone of TAGs and membrane glycerolipids and it can be dephosphorylated to yield glycerol, an osmotic stabilizer and compatible …

Expression Of Cyanobacterial Fbp/Sbpase In Soybean Prevents Yield Depression Under Future Climate Conditions, Iris H. Köhler, Ursula M. Ruiz-Vera, Andy Vanloocke, Michell L. Thomey, Thomas Clemente, Stephen P. Long, Donald R. Ort, Carl J. Bernacchi

Center for Plant Science Innovation: Faculty Publications

Predictions suggest that current crop production needs to double by 2050 to meet global food and energy demands. Based on theory and experimental studies, overexpression of the photosynthetic enzyme sedoheptulose-1,7-bisphosphatase (SBPase) is expected to enhance C₃ crop photosynthesis and yields. Here we test how expression of the cyanobacterial, bifunctional fructose-1,6/sedoheptulose-1,7-bisphosphatase (FBP/SBPase) affects carbon assimilation and seed yield (SY) in a major crop (soybean, Glycine max). For three growing seasons, wild-type (WT) and FBP/SBPase-expressing (FS) plants were grown in the field under ambient (400 μmol mol⁻¹) and elevated (600 μmol mol⁻¹) CO₂ concentrations [CO …

Overexpression Of Sbmyb60 In Sorghum Bicolor Impacts Both Primary And Secondary Metabolism, Erin D. Scully, Tammy Gries, Nathan A. Palmer, Gautam Sarath, Deanna L. Funnell-Harris, Lisa Baird, Paul Twigg, Javier Seravalli, Thomas E. Clemente, Scott E. Sattler

Center for Plant Science Innovation: Faculty Publications

• Few transcription factors have been identified in C₄ grasses that either positively or negatively regulate monolignol biosynthesis.
• Previously, the overexpression of SbMyb60 in sorghum (Sorghum bicolor) has been shown to induce monolignol biosynthesis, which leads to elevated lignin deposition and altered cell wall composition. To determine how SbMyb60 overexpression impacts other metabolic pathways, RNA-Seq and metabolite profiling were performed on stalks and leaves.
• 35S::SbMyb60 was associated with the transcriptional activation of genes involved in aromatic amino acid, S-adenosyl methionine (SAM) and folate biosynthetic pathways. The high coexpression values between SbMyb60 and genes assigned to these pathways indicate …

Complete Mitochondrial Genomes From The Ferns Ophioglossum Californicum And Psilotum Nudum Are Highly Repetitive With The Largest Organellar Introns, Wenhu Guo, Andan Zhu, Weishu Fan, Jeffrey P. Mower

Center for Plant Science Innovation: Faculty Publications

• Currently, complete mitochondrial genomes (mitogenomes) are available from all major land plant lineages except ferns. Sequencing of fern mitogenomes could shed light on the major evolutionary transitions that established mitogenomic diversity among extant lineages.

• In this study, we generated complete mitogenomes from the adder’s tongue fern (Ophioglossum californicum) and the whisk fern (Psilotum nudum).

• The Psilotum mitogenome (628 kb) contains a rich complement of genes and introns, some of which are the largest of any green plant organellar genome. In the Ophioglossum mitogenome (372 kb), gene and intron content is slightly reduced, including the loss of …

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Plants With Useful Traits And Related Methods, Sally Ann Mackenzie, Roberto De La Rosa Santamaria

Center for Plant Science Innovation: Faculty Publications

The present invention provides methods for obtaining plants that exhibit useful traits by transient suppression of the MSH1 gene of the plants. Methods for identifying genetic loci that provide for useful traits in plants and plants produced with those loci are also provided. In addition, plants that exhibit the useful traits, parts of the plants including seeds, and products of the plants are provided as well as methods of using the plants.

Conventional And Unconventional Ubiquitination In Plant Immunity, Bangjun Zhou, Lirong Zeng

Center for Plant Science Innovation: Faculty Publications

Ubiquitination is one of the most abundant types of protein post-translational modification (PTM) in plant cells. The importance of ubiquitination in the regulation of many aspects of plant immunity has been increasingly appreciated in recent years. Most of the studies linking ubiquitination to the plant immune system, however, have been focused on the E3 ubiquitin ligases and the conventional ubiquitination that leads to the degradation of the substrate proteins by the 26S proteasome. By contrast, our knowledge about the role of unconventional ubiquitination that often serves as non-degradative, regulatory signal remains a sig- nificant gap. We discuss, in this review, …

Linking Nutrient Transport To Soil Physical Processes During Freeze/Thaw Events To Promote Wintertime Manure Management, Nutrient Use Efficiency, And Surface Water Quality., Melanie N. Stock, Francisco J. Arriaga, Peter A. Vadas, Laura Ward Good, K. G. Karthikeyan

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

The application of dairy manure to the landscape during winter is a longstanding practice for farms in the Midwestern United States and other temperate regions. Practical motivations behind winter spreading include affordability, availability of time, and the reduced risk of compaction from farm equipment on frozen soils. Wintertime manure applications, however, coincide with environmental conditions that are prone to runoff and accelerate nutrient losses from agricultural fields. Understanding the nutrient dynamics in response to winter-applied manure is especially important to Wisconsin, a leading state in dairy production, where up to 75% of annual runoff volumes occur on frozen and thawing …

Usage Of Extracellular Microvesicles As Novel And Promising Therapeutic Tool In Wound Healing, Sami Gamaleddin F. Alsabri

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Introduction Extracellular Microvesicles (EMVs) can carry genetic messages and biologically active proteins throughout tissues and the body. Because of their transport capabilities, EMVs play an important role both diseased and healthy conditions. For example, EMVs play an important regenerative role in many damaged tissues. In the current studies, we examine the role of EMVs in epithelial wound healing. The potential use of EMVs as drug delivery vehicles has gained considerable scientific interest because they can be delivered in circulation, can be targeted to specific areas/cells, and can pass natural barriers. In the current work, we investigate the potential of EMVs …

Mitochondrial-Dna Phylogenetic Information And The Reconstruction Of Human Population History: The South American Case, María Bárbara Postillone, S. Ivan Perez

Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Objectives: Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences are becoming increasingly important in the study of human population history. Here, we explore the differences in the amount of information of different mtDNA regions and their utility for the reconstruction of South American population history.

Material and methods: We analyzed six datasets comprising 259 mtDNA sequences from South America: Complete mtDNA, Coding, Control, hypervariable region I (HVRI), cytochrome b (cytb) plus Control, and cytb plus 12S plus 16S. The amount of information in each dataset was estimated employing several site-by-site and haplotype based statistics, distances among sequences, Neighbor-joining trees, distances among the estimated trees, …

An Out-Of-Core Gpu Based Dimensionality Reduction Algorithm For Big Mass Spectrometry Data And Its Application In Bottom-Up Proteomics, Muaaz Awan, Fahad Saeed

Parallel Computing and Data Science Lab Technical Reports

Modern high resolution Mass Spectrometry instruments can generate millions of spectra in a single systems biology experiment. Each spectrum consists of thousands of peaks but only a small number of peaks actively contribute to deduction of peptides. Therefore, pre-processing of MS data to detect noisy and non-useful peaks are an active area of research. Most of the sequential noise reducing algorithms are impractical to use as a pre-processing step due to high time-complexity. In this paper, we present a GPU based dimensionality-reduction algorithm, called G-MSR, for MS2 spectra. Our proposed algorithm uses novel data structures which optimize the memory and …

Gpu-Pcc: A Gpu Based Technique To Compute Pairwise Pearson’S Correlation Coefficients For Big Fmri Data, Taban Eslami, Muaaz Gul Awan, Fahad Saeed

Parallel Computing and Data Science Lab Technical Reports

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive brain imaging technique for studying the brain’s functional activities. Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient is an important measure for capturing dynamic behaviors and functional connectivity between brain components. One bottleneck in computing Correlation Coefficients is the time it takes to process big fMRI data. In this paper, we propose GPU-PCC, a GPU based algorithm based on vector dot product, which is able to compute pairwise Pearson’s Correlation Coefficients while performing computation once for each pair. Our method is able to compute Correlation Coefficients in an ordered fashion without the need to do post-processing reordering …

Antegrade Endosteal Fibular Strut Augmentation For Periprosthetic Femur Fracture Above Stemmed Total Knee Arthroplasty, Tyler Snoap, Jason Roberts, Matthew Jaykel

Research Day

Abstract Title: ANTEGRADE ENDOSTEAL FIBULAR STRUT AUGMENTATION FOR PERIPROSTHETIC FEMUR FRACTURE ABOVE STEMMED TOTAL KNEE ARTHROPLASTY Abstract ID: 245 Abstract Category: Clinical Research Introduction: 
The management of peri-prosthetics fracture around total knee replacements is technically challenging. The options for operative fixation become more limited if the femoral component is stemmed, which often is the case after revision arthroplasty procedures. The goals of surgery for peri-prosthetic fractures above knee replacements are to provide a rigid construct to promote healing, allow immediate knee range of motion, and allow weight bearing during the healing process. 
Purpose: 
The purpose of this study is to …

Feasibility Study To Assess Medical Student Visits To Developmentally Disabled Adults, Maria Mason, Brittany Chow, Xavier Jean, Sarah Khalil, Megan Cibulas

Research Day

Introduction The Probate Court of Kalamazoo appoints guardians to minors removed from the custody of their parents and to legally incapacitated or disabled adults. The state mandates that any child under age six placed into a guardianship be visited at least once a year to ensure proper care of the child, but there is no such mandate for the approximately 300 developmentally disabled (DD) adults under the care of the Probate Court. The purpose of this ongoing study is to determine the feasibility of annual visits to DD individuals conducted by volunteer medical students. Methods In this feasibility study, the …

Net Zero Energy Dairy Production: Powering Minnesota Dairy Farms With Renewable Energy, Mckenzie Dice

Honors Capstone Projects

The goal of this project was to determine if the West Central Research and Outreach Center (WCROC) dairy production could achieve a net zero energy status, meaning that the dairy operation uses as much as energy on-site as the amount of energy that is produced on-site for the dairy operation. There are several ways to accomplish this goal, principally through energy conservation, by means of installing more energy efficient technologies, as well as the installation of on-site renewable energy. At the WCROC dairy, a new utility room has been installed to introduce energy efficient technologies to the dairy operation, as …

Ua66/5 Agriculture Research And Education Center Impact Report 2016/2017, Wku Department Of Agiculture

Agriculture Department Publications

No abstract provided.

Ua66/5 Department Of Agriculture 2017 Newsletter, Department Of Agriculture And Food Science

Agriculture Department Publications

Sections include:

Alumni

Outstanding Agriculture Students

FUSE Grant Undergraduate Student Research

Agronomy

Agricultural Education News

Agricultural Ambassadors

Flower Gardens at WKU AREC

Hilltopper Creamery—Cheese

Agriculture Students Striving for Effective Tomorrows (ASSET) Conference

WKU President Caboni

WKU Equine

WKU Farm News

WKU Vineyard News

Jerry Baker

The Effects Of Ugg Boots On Lower Extremity Walking, Ariana Lafavre

Undergraduate Review

UGG boots have become an increasingly popular choice in footwear. Women, especially, have bought UGG boots at a high rate, making the shoe one of the top footwear choices in today’s world. UGG boots can be described as a type of flat footwear and flat footwear does not provide medial longitudinal arch support on the bottom of the foot. This lack of support may cause foot injury due to over pronation in the subtalar joint. There was still the question of if UGG boots limits rear foot pronation movement. The purpose of this study was to examine and compare the …

Genetic Polymorphisms In Caveolin-1 Associate With Breast Cancer Risk In Chinese Han Population, M Wang, T Tian, X Ma, W Zhu, Y Guo, Z Duan, J Fan, S Lin, K Liu, Y Zheng, Q Sheng, Z J. Dai, H Peng

Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine Faculty Publications

Caveolin-1(CAV-1) was demonstrated to be a tumor suppressor gene and be implicated in the development of breast cancer (BC). Numerous potentially functional polymorphisms in CAV-1 have been identified, but their effects on BC were not clear. This case-control study aims to evaluate the relationship between CAV-1 polymorphisms and BC risk. 560 BC patients and 583 healthy controls were enrolled in the present study, all from Chinese Han population. We detected 3 single nucleotide polymorphisms (rs3807987, rs1997623, and rs7804372) in CAV-1 using the Sequenom MassARRAY method. The association between CAV-1genotypes and BC risk was assessed in six genetic …

Cytokine Expression, Cytoskeleton Organization, And Viability Of Sim-A9 Microglia Exposed To Staphylococcus Aureus-Derived Lipoteichoic Acid And Peptidoglycan, Erin Roberts

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

In these experiments, SIM-A9 microglia were exposed to Staphylococcus aureus cell wall components lipoteichoic acid (LTA) and peptidoglycan (PGN) at a concentration of 5 ug/mL for six, twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four hours and the cytokine expression, cytoskeleton organization, and cell viability of the cells were observed. Following LTA and PGN exposure, TNF-a; secretion increased at each time interval and was highest observed at 24 hours. No significant IL-10 secretion was detected. Over the 24 hour period, cell viability and cytotoxicity of LTA and PGN treatment groups were not significantly different from the control, indicating the observed inflammatory cytokine response was …

The Wright State - Lake Campus 2016 - 2017 Scholarly Review, Wright State University - Lake Campus

Lake Campus Research Symposium Reports

This report provides a listing of the scholarly and creative endeavors from Lake Campus faculty during the 2016 calendar year and spans a variety of disciplines and formats. This report has been compiled from faculty submissions of scholarly achievements.

This document contains the Annual Research Report from 2016 and the Research Symposium Program from 2017.

Combating Antibiotic Resistance: A Policy Roadmap To Reduce Use Of Medically Important Antibiotics In Livestock, Expert Commission On Addressing The Contribution Of Livestock To The Antibiotic Resistance Crisis 2017

Antibiotic Resistance Action Center (ARAC)

No abstract provided.

Changes In Balance And Joint Position Sense During A 12-Day High Altitude Trek: The British Services Dhaulagiri Medical Research Expedition, Sarah B. Clarke

Datasets

Postural control and joint position sense are essential for safely undertaking leisure and professional activities, particularly at high altitude. We tested whether exposure to a 12-day trek with a gradual ascent to high altitude impairs postural control and joint position sense. This was a repeated measures observational study of 12 military service personnel (28±4 years). Postural control (sway velocity measured by a portable force platform) during standing balance, a Sharpened Romberg Test and knee joint position sense were measured, in England (113m), and at 3 research camps (3619m, 4600m and 5140m) on a 12-day high altitude trek in the Dhaulagiri …

Lilley Cornett Woods Plot Information And Topography Data, Ryan W. Mcewan, Julia I. Chapman, Robert N. Muller

Data Files: Big Everidge Hollow Permanent Plots

Plot information and topography data collected in the Big Everidge Hollow portion of the Lilley Cornett Woods Appalachian Ecological Research Station in southeastern Kentucky. Data key is provided in a supplemental file.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.26890/lcw.d9c9c1a2t4

Implications Of Animal Water Balance For Terrestrial Food Webs, Kevin E. Mccluney

Biological Sciences Faculty Publications

Recent research has documented shifts in per capita trophic interactions and food webs in response to changes in environmental moisture, from the top-down (consumers to plants), rather than solely bottom-up (plants to consumers). These responses may be predictable from effects of physiological, behavioral, and ecological traits on animal water balance, although predictions could be modified by energy or nutrient requirements, the risk of predation, population-level responses, and bottom-up effects. Relatively little work has explicitly explored food web effects of changes in animal water balance, despite the likelihood of widespread relevance, including during periodic droughts in mesic locations, where taxa may …

Probing For Binding Regions Of The Ftsz Protein Surface Through Site-Directed Insertions: Discovery Of Fully Functional Ftsz-Fluorescent Proteins, Desmond A. Moore, Zakiya N. Whatley, Chandra P. Joshi, Masaki Osawa, Harold P. Erickson

Biology Faculty Publications

FtsZ, a bacterial tubulin homologue, is a cytoskeletal protein that assembles into protofilaments that are one subunit thick. These protofilaments assemble further to form a “Z ring” at the center of prokaryotic cells. The Z ring generates a constriction force on the inner membrane and also serves as a scaffold to recruit cell wall remodeling proteins for complete cell division in vivo. One model of the Z ring proposes that protofilaments associate via lateral bonds to form ribbons; however, lateral bonds are still only hypothetical. To explore potential lateral bonding sites, we probed the surface of Escherichia coli FtsZ …

The School Food Environment And Its Association With Dietary Intake Among Rural Adolescents, Hannah F. Hickey

Theses and Dissertations--Nutrition and Food Systems

The school food environment has the ability to increase the consumption of fruit and vegetables in rural adolescents. This study used a survey to allow adolescents in seven rural counties to self-report their fruit and vegetable intake as well as utilizing the USDA Mathematica tool and the School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study audits to evaluate what food and beverage products were actually available to adolescents. By using these two measures, associations between fruit and vegetable intake and availability of healthy and unhealthy foods were determined. The availability of healthy snacks and beverages was found to be associated with sugar-sweetened …

Developmental Manganese Neurotoxicity In Rats: Cognitive Deficits In Allocentric And Egocentric Learning And Memory, Nina Atanasova, Robyn M. Amos-Kroohs, Laurie L. Davenport, Zuhair I. Abdulla, Matthew R. Skelton, Charles V. Vorhees, Michael T. Williams

Philosophy and Religious Studies Department Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Identifying Potential Causes Of Human Birth Defects Through Genetic Studies Of Worm Development, Solomiya Pushchak, Kaveri Khanna

Undergraduate Research Posters 2017

We will use the roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans to study the process of meiosis, which is involved in the formation of gametes (sperm and eggs). Its small size, rapid life cycle, transparency and well-annotated genome allows researchers to track the effects of mutations that disrupt gametogenesis. Our preliminary data demonstrated that a genetic screen for mutations that increase the viability of embryos produced by worms lacking SPO-11, a critical factor regulating meiotic chromosomal inheritance, can identify genes required for the accurate transmission of the genome from one generation to the next. To further test this hypothesis, we will continue this screen …

The Effects Of Cell Cycle Position On Skeletal Myoblast Differentiation Or Apoptosis, Asma Saleh, Briana Boslett

Undergraduate Research Posters 2017

Programmed cell death (apoptosis) is induced by the same culture conditions as differentiation in skeletal myoblasts, yet these processes result in mutually exclusive physiological endpoints. Dissecting this coordinate regulation could enable selective manipulation relevant to the alleviation of muscle degeneration, the effectiveness of regeneration, or treatment utilizing skeletal myoblast transfer. Analysis of asynchronous cultures of myoblasts in growth media (GM) were determined to have 50% of cells in G1 phase, 30% of cells in S phase and 20% of cells in G2/M phase. When skeletal myoblasts in GM are switched to differentiation media (DM), roughly 70% of cells undergo differentiation …

Introducing Delays Between Two Lateral Line Stimuli Alters Choices By African Clawed Toads, Kevin Goth, Austin Schaffer

Undergraduate Research Posters 2017

African clawed toads (Xenopus laevis) use their lateral line system to detect prey. The African clawed frog can determine the distance of the origin of a surface wave. This allows the frog to differentiate which stimulus is more important for prey capture. The African clawed toads were put into a glass basin which was filled with water. Above the water basin are four rods that are controlled through a computer program which allow the rods to touch the surface of the water. After recording, each frame was examined in the videos to determine the turn angle and stimuli distance of …