Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology Commons^™

The Metabolic Change Of Lipid Species In Stam Mice With Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Devin J. Peart

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Primary liver cancer hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second leading cause of cancer death worldwide. In the US, primary liver cancer is the most rapidly increasing type of cancer due to increases in hepatitis B and C and the continued trend of greater and greater percentages of the population suffering from obesity, diabetes mellitus and metabolic syndrome. The prognosis for this disease is poor, with a 5-year survival rate of 26% as compared to only 2% when the cancer is metastatic. Unfortunately, current strategies for early detection of HCC, including routine CT imaging or alpha-fetoprotein biomarker, are suboptimal and tend …

Eluication Of Lipid Metabolic Pathways In Differentiating Giardia Lamblia Using High Resolution Mass Spectrometry, Cameron Ellis

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Giardia lamblia is an intestinal protozoan found worldwide, including the U.S. This parasite exists in two morphologic stages - a replicative trophozoite and a relatively dormant yet viable cyst. While exposures of cysts to gastric acid during passage through the human stomach induces excystation, factors in the small intestine, where trophozoites colonize trigger encystation or cyst formation. Transformation into cyst stage is essential for Giardia to survive in the environment for months before infecting new hosts. Because of its small genome size (11.7 Mb), metabolic pathways in Giardia are highly reduced. As far as lipid metabolism is concerned, only limited …

Deciphering Phosphoprotein Phosphatase Signaling Networks Using Proteomics Approaches, Brooke Brauer

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

Protein phosphorylation is a highly regulated mechanism of cell signaling control and its deregulation is implicated in disease. The kinases that catalyze the addition of phosphate groups onto their substrate proteins have been well studied, their signaling pathways mapped, and their effects on cell and organismal health observed. Knowledge of the phosphatases that reverse the reaction only recently began to come into focus. Phosphoprotein phosphatases (PPPs), long thought to be housekeeping enzymes, are now known to be exquisitely specific towards their substrates, but the exact nature of phosphatase regulation—both upstream and downstream of the phosphatase—is unclear.

PPPs recognize substrates through …

Deciphering Protein Higher-Order Structure And Interactions Via Diethylpyrocarbonate Labeling-Mass Spectrometry, Xiao Pan

Doctoral Dissertations

The study of protein higher-order structures is vital because it is closely related to the investigation of protein folding, aggregation, interaction and protein therapeutics. Consequently, numerous biochemical and biophysical tools have been developed to study protein higher-order structures in many different situations. The combination of covalent labeling (CL) and mass spectrometry (MS) has emerged as a powerful tool for studying protein structures and offers many advantages over other traditional techniques, such as better structural coverage, high throughput, high sensitivity, and the ability to study proteins in mixtures. This dissertation focuses on diethylpyrocarbonate (DEPC) as an effective CL reagent that can …