Genetics and Genomics Commons^™

Special Muscles, Annamaria C. Scaccia

Capstones

Special Muscles is a documentary that explores living with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a fatal degenerative disease that weakens the muscles at an aggressive rate. The film will give an uncensored look at how one family copes with inevitability of the disease and their journey chasing a promising experimental cure.

Special Muscles follows 7-year-old Pietro Scarso and his family as they face the challenges, complications and promise of treating Pietro’s progressive muscle disorder. The film travels from New York to Los Angeles to Philadelphia to document the Scarso family’s race against time as Pietro undergoes a 96-week clinical trial for Eteplirsen, …

The Insulin/Igf Signaling Regulator Cytohesin/Grp-1 Modulates Sensitivity To Excitotoxicity In C. Elegans, Nazila Tehrani

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Excitotoxicity is a form of neurodegeneration that serves as the main underlying cause of brain damage in stroke/brain ischemia, and a contributing factor in a range of neurological diseases such as Epilepsy, ALS, Alzheimer, and Huntington's disease. In excitotoxicity, over-activation of glutamate receptors causes necrotic neuronal cell death. In spite of intense study of excitotoxicity, the molecular mechanisms that lead from glutamate receptor activation to necrotic death remain a mystery. Aging neurons are known to be more vulnerable to excitotoxicity and less likely to recover, but the underlying reasons for the increased cellular vulnerability are unknown. To gain insight into …

Molecular-Genetic And Behavioral Analysis Of The Functionality Of Patterning In The Trigeminal Neuraxis, Dana Bakalar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

A striking feature of the vibrissal representation in rodents is the presence; at brainstem (barrellettes), thalamic (barrelloids) and cortical levels (barrels) of a somatotopically organized pattern of neurons which is isomorphic, both morphologically and physiologically, to the pattern of vibrissae on the snout. The vibrissal system is required for several classes of behavior, including feeding and active vibrissal sensing, but the functional role of the patterning in these behaviors is unknown. We used two mutant animals lacking patterning in two areas of the vibrissal neuraxis to examine the functional role of patterning. We examined feeding behavior using a knockout of …