Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Allatotropin: An Ancestral Myotropic Neuropeptide Involved In Feeding, Maria Eugenia Alzugaray, Mariana Laura Adami, Luis Anibal Diambra, Salvado Hernandez-Martinez, Christina Damborenea, Fernando Gabriel Noriega, Jorge Rafael Ronderos

Department of Biological Sciences

Background

Cell-cell interactions are a basic principle for the organization of tissues and organs allowing them to perform integrated functions and to organize themselves spatially and temporally. Peptidic molecules secreted by neurons and epithelial cells play fundamental roles in cell-cell interactions, acting as local neuromodulators, neurohormones, as well as endocrine and paracrine messengers. Allatotropin (AT) is a neuropeptide originally described as a regulator of Juvenile Hormone synthesis, which plays multiple neural, endocrine and myoactive roles in insects and other organisms.

Methods

A combination of immunohistochemistry using AT-antibodies and AT-Qdot nanocrystal conjugates was used to identify immunoreactive nerve cells containing the …

Mutation At The Human D1s80 Minisatellite Locus, Kuppareddi Balamurugan, Martin L. Tracey, Uwe Heine, George C. Maha, George T. Duncan

Department of Biological Sciences

Little is known about the general biology of minisatellites. The purpose of this study is to examine repeat mutations from the D1S80 minisatellite locus by sequence analysis to elucidate the mutational process at this locus. This is a highly polymorphic minisatellite locus, located in the subtelomeric region of chromosome 1. We have analyzed 90,000 human germline transmission events and found seven (7) mutations at this locus. The D1S80 alleles of the parentage trio, the child, mother, and the alleged father were sequenced and the origin of the mutation was determined. Using American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) guidelines, we found …

Combination Of 16s Rrna Variable Regions Provides A Detailed Analysis Of Bacterial Community Dynamics In The Lungs Of Cystic Fibrosis Patients, Melissa S. Doud, Michael Light, Gisela Gonzalez, Giri Narasimhan, Kalai Mathee

Department of Biological Sciences

Chronic bronchopulmonary bacterial infections remain the most common cause of morbidity and mortality among patients with cystic fibrosis (CF). Recent community sequencing work has now shown that the bacterial community in the CF lung is polymicrobial. Identifying bacteria in the CF lung through sequencing can be costly and is not practical for many laboratories. Molecular techniques such as terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism or amplicon length heterogeneity-polymerase chain reaction (LH-PCR) can provide many laboratories with the ability to study CF bacterial communities without costly sequencing. The aim of this study was to determine if the use of LH-PCR with multiple …