Microbiology Commons^™

Development Of An Attenuated Zika Virus By Editing The 5’ Untranslated Region, E. Ashley Thompson

Master's Theses

Zika Virus (ZIKV) is a mosquito-transmitted flavivirus that usually causes no symptoms to mild febrile in humans, and it has been regarded as an insignificant pathogen to public health. However, recent outbreaks of ZIKV infection have revealed that ZIKV can cause severe neurological effects in adults, such as Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), and in infants whose mothers acquired the virus during pregnancy, causing Congenital Zika Syndrome (CZS). Currently, no approved vaccine is available and there is a critical need to develop an effective and safe vaccine. While most vaccine developmental strategies target the viral prM-E protein of ZIKV, we aimed to …

Surveying Host Innate Immune Responses To Interferon Antagonist-Deficient Murine Coronaviruses, Aaron Brian Volk

Master's Theses

Two coronaviruses (CoVs)—severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) virus and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) virus—have emerged in the 21st century from animal reservoirs into the human population, each causing an epidemic associated with significant disease and mortality. CoV epidemics are currently only controllable by rigorous public health measures; no targeted therapeutics or vaccines exist to treat or prevent any human CoV infection. One method of generating attenuated CoV strains to be studied as vaccine candidates involves specifically disrupting CoV-encoded interferon (IFN) antagonists, thereby rendering the virus vulnerable to host innate antiviral immunity. Deubiquitinating (DUB) activity encoded within CoV nonstructural protein …

Antibodies To Inhibit Clostridium Difficile Adhesion To Human Gut Epithelial Cell Line, Wonbeom Paik

Master's Theses

Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is a major hospital-acquired diarrhea that can cause life-threatening complications such as pseudomembranous colitis. CDI is caused by colonization of host with C. difficile, a Gram positive, anaerobic bacterium known to produce toxins that cause disease. Normally, the gut microbiota protects the host from CDI, but disruption of the microbial composition through antibiotic treatment can leave one vulnerable for CDI. To date, no vaccines for preventing CDI are available.

In this study, the potential of antibodies directed against specific surface molecules of C. difficile to block bacterial adherence to host gut epithelial cells was studied, in …