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Kennesaw State University

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Structural Biology

Bloom: Behavioral Learning And Outcome Observation In Microbes, Sean Sarwar Haque, Luke Compton Wharton, Ming Lin, Razvan Voicu Feb 2025

Bloom: Behavioral Learning And Outcome Observation In Microbes, Sean Sarwar Haque, Luke Compton Wharton, Ming Lin, Razvan Voicu

Symposium of Student Scholars

Understanding how pathogens respond to physical changes in their environment is crucial for developing effective treatments and preventative measures. Current research often relies on static models or experimental data that either fail to capture the dynamic interactions within cellular environments or are not generalizable to other types of pathogens. This project aims to address this gap by creating a comprehensive cell simulation that models pathogens and their response to chemical, physical, and physiological changes. The proposed solution is a simulation that integrates biological data and computational modeling to replicate the behavior of pathogens in real time as they are affected …


Ivy Proteins As Guardians Of Bacterial Cell Wall Integrity: Regulation Of Lytic Transglycosylases Explored, Aamna Aijaz, Trinity E. Alamutu, Vy T. Dao, Nathaniel R. Davis, Michael D. Landers, Nykolas K. Mackevicius, Liliana Ortiz, Irina F. Padilla-Montoya, Kacy J. Smith, Maria L. Snyder, Anthony J. Stefanie, Blaise M. Williams, Thomas C. Leeper Feb 2025

Ivy Proteins As Guardians Of Bacterial Cell Wall Integrity: Regulation Of Lytic Transglycosylases Explored, Aamna Aijaz, Trinity E. Alamutu, Vy T. Dao, Nathaniel R. Davis, Michael D. Landers, Nykolas K. Mackevicius, Liliana Ortiz, Irina F. Padilla-Montoya, Kacy J. Smith, Maria L. Snyder, Anthony J. Stefanie, Blaise M. Williams, Thomas C. Leeper

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

Lytic transglycosylases (LTs) are bacterial enzymes involved in biosynthesis and maintenance of the peptidoglycan cell wall. LTs are reported to be regulated by two paralogs of Inhibitor of Vertebrate Lysozymes: Ivyp1 and Ivyp2. This study investigated the regulatory dynamics between the soluble LT (SltB1), and Ivy paralogs as putative regulators in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (PA). The secondary objective was to delineate the critical roles played by a glutamic acid at position 135 in SltB1 and a histidine at position 62 in Ivyp1 in governing their molecular interaction through site directed mutagenesis. Isolated SltB1 shows no lytic activity in our assay, in …


Design, Synthesis, And Nmr-Guided Characterization Of A Targeted Covalent Inhibitor-Like Molecule Against Ivyp1 From P. Aeruginosa, Samuel Taylor Moore Dec 2024

Design, Synthesis, And Nmr-Guided Characterization Of A Targeted Covalent Inhibitor-Like Molecule Against Ivyp1 From P. Aeruginosa, Samuel Taylor Moore

Master's Theses

Multi-drug resistance poses a serious threat to future generations and historical antibiotic pipelines; consequently, the medical and economic burdens associated with treating multidrug-resistant bacteria are substantiated. In this context, P. aeruginosa (PA) emerges as one of the most significant healthcare challenges, being a leading cause of resistance-associated mortality worldwide. Despite modern efforts to combat these poor outcomes, drug-resistant cases continue to rise, and the need for novel antibiotic treatment is apparent. To this end, we investigated relevant resistance mechanisms and past antibiotic targets within PA, and in doing so, we identified relationships between peptidoglycan biology and a periplasmic protein, Inhibitor …


Designing And Synthesizing A Warhead-Fragment Inhibitory Ligand For Ivyp1 Through Fragment-Based Drug Discovery, Samuel Moore Dec 2022

Designing And Synthesizing A Warhead-Fragment Inhibitory Ligand For Ivyp1 Through Fragment-Based Drug Discovery, Samuel Moore

Symposium of Student Scholars

Fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) is a powerful tool for developing anticancer and antimicrobial agents. Within this, magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) provides a comprehensive qualitative and quantitative approach to screening and validating weak and robust binders with targeted proteins, making NMR among the most attractive strategies in FBDD. Inhibitor of vertebrate lysozyme (Ivyp1) of P. aeruginosa serves as an excellent target because of its active cellular location and implications in clinical prognosis for cystic fibrosis and immunocompromised patients. This study uses current NMR and biophysical techniques to develop a covalent, fragment-linked warhead inhibitor for Ivyp1 through synthetic methods, warhead linking, and …


Microbial Diversity And Community Structure In Sediments Associated With The Seagrass (Thallassia Testudinum) In Apalachicola Bay, Florida, Rahma Ahmed, Thomas Mcelroy, Troy Mutchler Apr 2022

Microbial Diversity And Community Structure In Sediments Associated With The Seagrass (Thallassia Testudinum) In Apalachicola Bay, Florida, Rahma Ahmed, Thomas Mcelroy, Troy Mutchler

Symposium of Student Scholars

Seagrass is an angiosperm which provides many ecosystem services in coastal areas, such as providing food, shelter and nurseries for many species, and decreasing the impact of waves on shorelines. A global assessment reported that 29% of known seagrass meadows are in a state of decline due to the effects of human activity. Seagrass is commonly found in shallow marine waters where they form meadows containing a microbiome that plays an important role in providing nutrients for seagrass growth, though little is known about the microorganisms within the seagrass meadow sediments. Our project collected sediments from seagrass meadows and adjacent …


Snake Venom Peptides And Toxin Targeting The Main Protease Of Sars-Cov-2, Breauna Strawder, James Stewart, Mohammad A. Halim Nov 2021

Snake Venom Peptides And Toxin Targeting The Main Protease Of Sars-Cov-2, Breauna Strawder, James Stewart, Mohammad A. Halim

Symposium of Student Scholars

The corona virus began to spread in Wuhan, China which caused it to spread worldwide creating a global pandemic in the beginning of 2020, infecting over 243 million and killing over 4.5 million people worldwide. Significant efforts were made to produce vaccines against the virus, which led the recognition of a few vaccines that has been approved by FDA. These vaccines, Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, which all have efficacy against Covid-19. Despite having vaccines, COVID-19 is still present and infecting millions and killing thousands of people every day. Multiple therapeutic options would allow us to slow down or …


Binding Affinity And Interaction Of Sars-Cov-2 Epitopes With Major Histocompatibility Complex, Sareena Kandavalli, James Stewart, Mohammed A. Halim Nov 2021

Binding Affinity And Interaction Of Sars-Cov-2 Epitopes With Major Histocompatibility Complex, Sareena Kandavalli, James Stewart, Mohammed A. Halim

Symposium of Student Scholars

SARS CoV-2 has been affecting the world since 2019. It caused 245 million cases of infection and around 5 million deaths worldwide. The most important strategies for the development of vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 are inactivated or weakened virus, replicating or non-replicating viral vector-based approaches, DNA, RNA, virus particle like approaches and epitope-based approaches. The epitope-based approach is rapid, accurate, cost-effective, and reliable against pathogens. By presenting epitopes (antigen peptides) on antigen-presenting cells (APCs), the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), also recognized as the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system in humans, plays an essential role in triggering T-cell immune responses. The focus …


The Veiled Lady Fungus, Nick Parbhoo Aug 2021

The Veiled Lady Fungus, Nick Parbhoo

Symposium of Student Scholars

This semester I studied the Stinkhorn mushroom Phallus Indusiatus. The plan of this research is to develop a protocol for growing this fungus and using it in collaboration with research on it’s web-like properties of the unique veil produced by the fruiting body. This will be distributed to teams of engineers as well as NASA for Dr. Penick’s research. Due to logistics of receiving spores from across the world, we still have not been able to begin growing these mushrooms. However, I have described a protocol that we will follow in order to grow. The protocol contains detailed descriptions …


Understanding How Map Kinases Influence Endothelial Nitric-Oxide Synthase Activity, Xzaviar Solone May 2019

Understanding How Map Kinases Influence Endothelial Nitric-Oxide Synthase Activity, Xzaviar Solone

Master of Science in Integrative Biology Theses

Mitogen activated protein kinases (MAPK) p38 and ERK have both been reported to bind endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) with submicromolar affinity via proposed interactions with a pentabasic non-canonical MAPK binding sequence in the autoinhibitory insertion of eNOS. The neuronal isoform, which lacks the pentabasic motif, did not bind either MAPK significantly. In the present study, the pentabasic motif was validated using predictive modeling programming, and eNOS phosphorylation by MAPKs (P38, ERK and JNK) was examined using in vitro kinase assays and immunoblotting. JNK phosphorylation at Ser114 contrasts with ERK, which phosphorylated Ser600, and p38, which phosphorylated …