Cell Anatomy Commons^™

Aspects Of The Innate Immune System In The Caribbean Octocoral Swiftia Exserta, Lorenzo P. Menzel

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The immune systems of cnidaria are important to study for two reasons: to gain a better understanding of the evolution of immune responses, and to provide a basis to partially redress the precipitous world-wide die-offs of reef corals, some of which have been attributed to diseases and stress. Many immune responses share ancient evolutionary origins and are common across many taxa.

Using Swiftia exserta, an azooxanthellate ahermatypic local octocoral, as a proxy model organism to study aspects of innate immunity in corals and cnidaria allows us to address both of the reasons listed above while not using endangered species. …

Bax And Bak Function As The Outer Membrane Component Of The Mitochondrial Permeability Pore In Regulating Necrotic Cell Death In Mice, Jason Karch, Jennifer Q. Kwong, Adam R. Burr, Michelle A. Sargent, John W. Elrod, Pablo M. Peixoto, Sonia Martinez-Caballero, Hanna Osinskka, Emily H-Y Cheng, Jeffrey Robbins, Kathleen W. Kinnally, Jeffrey D. Molkentin

Publications and Research

A critical event in ischemia-based cell death is the opening of the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (MPTP). However, the molecular identity of the components of the MPTP remains unknown. Here, we determined that the Bcl-2 family members Bax and Bak, which are central regulators of apoptotic cell death, are also required for mitochondrial pore-dependent necrotic cell death by facilitating outer membrane permeability of the MPTP. Loss of Bax/Bak reduced outer mitochondrial membrane permeability and conductance without altering inner membrane MPTP function, resulting in resistance to mitochondrial calcium overload and necrotic cell death. Reconstitution with mutants of Bax that cannot oligomerize …

Unexpected Phylogenetic Positions Of The Genera Rupirana And Crossodactylodes Reveal Insights Into The Biogeography And Reproductive Evolution Of Leptodactylid Frogs, Antoine Foquet, Boris Leonardo Blotto, Maximiliano Manuel Maronna, Vanessa Kruth Verdade, Flora Acuña Juncá, Rafael O. De Sá, Miguel Trefaut Rodrigues

Biology Faculty Publications

Despite major progress in deciphering the amphibian tree of life by molecular phylogenetics, we identified two questions remaining to be answered regarding relationships within Hyloidea, the clade of South American origin that comprises most extant anuran diversity. A few genera like Rupirana and Crossodactylodes have enigmatic phylogenetic positions, and relationships among major lineages within some families like Leptodactylidae remain ambiguous. To resolve these specific questions we used two approaches (1) a complete matrix approach representing >6.6 kb, including most major Hyloidea lineages (61 terminals) combining different methods of phylogenetic reconstruction and measures of node support; and (2) a supermatrix approach …

Flash4 Dark Reference Images, George Mcnamara

George McNamara

Hamamatsu FLASH4.0 dark reference images, acquired with 10 second exposure times, no light to camera. Camera offset (set by Hamamatsu( is ~100 (the average intensity of the first image is always ~1 intensity level higher - an odd feature, but trivial in practice for a 16-bit camera).

George McNamara, Ph.D.

Single Cells Analyst at L.J.N. Cooper Lab

University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

Functional Analysis Of A Putative Membrane-Bound Endo-Β-1,4-Glucanase From Panicum Virgatum, Joshua N Grant, Jonathan D. Willis, Neal Stewart

EURēCA: Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement

Cellulose is the most abundant carbohydrate in the world and is degraded by the synergistic action of multiple enzymes. One large family of enzymes capable of hydrolyzing cellulose is glycoside hydrolase family 9 (GH9), which includes several endoglucanases. Recent research into the molecular biology of plants has revealed certain genes coding for endo-β-1,4-glucanases (EGases). The EGases in plants are primarily functional during cell elongation through wall stress relaxation. GH9 enzymes have been found in insects, bacteria, oomycetes, and fungi. In insects, EGases enable the organism to digest cellulose; in fungi, EGases are suspected to play an important role in obtaining …

Video Codec Performance (Excel Spreadsheet), George Mcnamara

George McNamara

Video codec performance (Excel spreadsheet). Movie was made in 2005-2006 when I worked at City of Hope National Medical Center. VTLF refers to Video Timelapse Light Facility. Videos were outputted from MetaMorph as AVI files. Personally, I always recommend uncompressed video files fro scientific uses. I also encourage posting the original scientific data format (ex. .lsm, .zvi, .lif, .stk).

Pubspectra Tattletales, George Mcnamara

George McNamara

Tattletales for Multiplex Fluorescent Reporters in Single Cells for Metabolomics

George McNamara

As of April 2013: L.J.N. Cooper & D.A. Lee Cellular Immunotherapy Lab, University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX

Email: gtmcnamara@mdanderson.org, geomcnamara@earthlink.net

Tattletales is my concept for spatial multiplexing many fluorescent protein (FP) biosensors in the same live cell. For example, there are excellent FP biosensors to Ca++ ions, pH, glucose, ribose, glutamine, glutamate, ATP, redox, ROS, pyruvate, cAMP, cGMP, IP3, PI(3,4,5)P3, cell cycle indicators (Fucci2), PKA, PKC, photsphatases, caspase(s) [1, 2]. However, these are typically used one biosensor per experiment, due in part to flooding …

Embryonic Stem Cells Are Redirected To Non-Tumorigenic Epithelial Cell Fate By Interaction With The Mammary Microenvironment, Corinne A. Boulanger, Robert D. Bruno, David L. Mack, Monica Gonzales, Nadia P. Castro, David S. Salomon, Gilbert H. Smith

Medical Diagnostics & Translational Sciences Faculty Publications

Experiments were conducted to redirect mouse Embryonic Stem (ES) cells from a tumorigenic phenotype to a normal mammary epithelial phenotype in vivo. Mixing LacZ-labeled ES cells with normal mouse mammary epithelial cells at ratios of 1:5 and 1:50 in phosphate buffered saline and immediately inoculating them into epithelium-divested mammary fat pads of immune-compromised mice accomplished this. Our results indicate that tumorigenesis occurs only when normal mammary ductal growth is not achieved in the inoculated fat pads. When normal mammary gland growth occurs, we find ES cells (LacZ+) progeny interspersed with normal mammary cell progeny in the mammary epithelial structures. We …

Evaluation Of Antibiotic Resistance Emerging From Use Of Antibiotics In Cafos, J. R. Robbins, D. Hellman, N. Pease, M. Costello

Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.