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Full-Text Articles in Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology

Developing Regulated Crispr Systems To Control Bacterial Microbiomes, Gregory M. Pellegrino Dec 2023

Developing Regulated Crispr Systems To Control Bacterial Microbiomes, Gregory M. Pellegrino

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Changes to the human microbiome’s composition and metabolome are associated with numerous diseases and alterations to xenobiotic metabolism. As such, targeting the human microbiome is an increasingly popular option for therapeutic interventions. However, traditional therapies that target the microbiome such as antibiotics lack specificity, which can affect the beneficial species of the microbiome and cause adverse health outcomes such as the rise of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria. Therefore, the research and development of specific, targeted antimicrobial therapies is crucial to effectively treating microbiome dysbioses.
CRISPR and CRISPRi provide easily modifiable, RNA-guided mechanisms mediated by the Cas9 or dCas9 enzymes to induce sequence-specific …


Characterization Of Dna Regulatory Elements Of The Highly Abundant Secreted Protein 1 (Hasp1) Promoter And Analysis Of Transcriptomic Responses Under Phosphate Depletion In The Diatom Phaeodactylum Tricornutum, Mahsa Farmanbar Sep 2023

Characterization Of Dna Regulatory Elements Of The Highly Abundant Secreted Protein 1 (Hasp1) Promoter And Analysis Of Transcriptomic Responses Under Phosphate Depletion In The Diatom Phaeodactylum Tricornutum, Mahsa Farmanbar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Phosphorus (P) is essential for all life. The bioavailability of phosphorus in oceans impacts diatoms like Phaeodactylum tricornutum (P. tricornutum). P. tricornutum is extensively used in transcriptomic studies to understand pathways involved in P-acquisition. However, activation mechanisms and roles of regulatory elements in P-acquisition responses remains unclear. Here, I deleted predicted phosphate regulatory sites in P.tricornutum’s HASP1 promoter to create different HASP1-eGFP constructs. Under P-depletion, two constructs showed increased eGFP secretion. Additionally, a HASP1 knockout strain was grown under different phosphorus sources to determine if HASP1 is a phytase. Cells grown in full phosphorus utilized organic …


Advances In Phaeodactylum Tricornutum Nuclear Engineering, Mark Pampuch Jul 2023

Advances In Phaeodactylum Tricornutum Nuclear Engineering, Mark Pampuch

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The marine diatom Phaeodactylum tricornutum has the potential to become an excellent platform for the sustainable production of valuable compounds and pharmaceuticals, but currently large-scale engineering of this organism remains a challenge due factors like inefficient genetic transformation protocols and a lack of accurate genomic data. This thesis addresses these two bottlenecks by (i) optimizing an electroporation protocol to P. tricornutum and (ii) remapping genomic data from a scaffolded genome assembly to a telomere-to-telomere genome assembly. An optimized transformation protocol was developed that could consistently transform blunt-ended and DNA with overhangs and yielded up to 1000+ colony forming units per …


Functionalizing Conjugative Systems To Deliver Crispr Nucleases For Targeted Bacterial Killing, Thomas A. Hamilton Jul 2023

Functionalizing Conjugative Systems To Deliver Crispr Nucleases For Targeted Bacterial Killing, Thomas A. Hamilton

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The interactions between humans and microbes are intimately important to human health, with both commensal and pathogenic bacteria affecting homeostasis and disease. Increasing concern over antibiotic resistance in bacterial pathogens represents a significant threat to human health, and use of traditional antibiotics to treat infections can be detrimental to commensal bacteria as well as pathogens, demonstrating a need for more specific antibacterial reagents. RNA-guided CRISPR nucleases, which can target and cleave genomes of interest, are a potential tool for specific bacterial targeting. A key limitation to the use of CRISPR antimicrobials is effective and robust delivery to the target bacteria. …


Assessing Selective Plasmids For Bradyrhizobium Sp. Doa9 And Mesorhizobium Loti, Aiden J. Wilcox, Rebecca Meaney, Bogumil Karas Aug 2021

Assessing Selective Plasmids For Bradyrhizobium Sp. Doa9 And Mesorhizobium Loti, Aiden J. Wilcox, Rebecca Meaney, Bogumil Karas

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

No abstract provided.


Implications And Applications Of Transfer Rna Variants That Mistranslate The Genetic Code, Matthew D. Berg Jan 2021

Implications And Applications Of Transfer Rna Variants That Mistranslate The Genetic Code, Matthew D. Berg

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Genetic information is passed from DNA to RNA to protein through the processes of transcription and translation. Transfer RNAs (tRNA) are the adaptors that bring amino acids to the growing polypeptide chain during translation and decode the three base codons that define protein sequence. Mistranslation occurs when an amino acid different from what is specified by the genetic code is inserted into a protein. tRNA variants cause mistranslation by decreasing the accuracy of amino acid charging or by altering decoding at the ribosome. My goal was to characterize mistranslating tRNA variants, identify their effects on cells and determine mechanisms used …


Practical Applications And Future Directions Of Genetic Code Expansion: Validation Of Novel Akt1 Substrates And The Design Of A Synthetic Auxotroph Strain Of B. Subtilis, Mcshane M. Mckenna Mar 2020

Practical Applications And Future Directions Of Genetic Code Expansion: Validation Of Novel Akt1 Substrates And The Design Of A Synthetic Auxotroph Strain Of B. Subtilis, Mcshane M. Mckenna

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

In Chapter 1, site-specifically phosphorylated variants of the oncogene Akt1 were made in Escherichia coli using the orthogonal translation system that enable genetic code expansion with phosphoserine. The differentially phosphorylated variants of Akt1 were used to validate newly predicted Akt1 substrates. The predicted target sites of the peptide substrates were synthesized and subjected to in vitro kinase assays to quantify the activity of each Akt1 phosphorylated variant towards the predicted peptide. A previously uncharacterized kinase-substrate interaction between Akt1 and a peptide derived from RAB11 Family Interacting Protein 2 (RAB11FIP2) was validated in vitro. Chapter 2 describes the preliminary development of …