Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Environmental Relationships And Predator-Prey Interactions Within The Snapper-Grouper Complex In The Southeastern U.S. Atlantic – Implications For Fisheries Management, Dawn M. Glasgow

Theses and Dissertations

Stock assessments indicate many valuable fish species are declining, or are considered overfished and/or are undergoing overfishing. Fisheries scientists and managers in the southeastern U.S. typically have utilized a single-species approach, and relied on catch per unit effort data derived from fishery-independent surveys to determine indices of abundance for economically important reef fish. However, catchability for these surveys vary for many reasons including environmental and predator-prey relationships. This research was developed to elucidate environmental influences on reef fish assemblages and distribution of reef-associated marine predators, and examine predator-prey dynamics that may influence relative abundance of large predators based on chevron …

Radioactive Contamination Of Natural Biological Systems: Oxidative Balance And Genetic Stability, Daniel Einor

Theses and Dissertations

The global demand for nuclear energy grows, and so do the risks of an accidental release of nuclear products into the environment. Therefore, understanding the health and ecological effects of contamination by radionuclides should be of great interest for biomedical specialists and the public. Empirical studies unequivocally show that high doses of ionizing radiation (IR) shift the redox-balance of many biological systems and increase the rates of genetic errors. However, the effects of chronic low doses of radiation vary significantly between tissues and between species. The present dissertation comprises the results of experimental and meta-analytical research of a variety of …

Modulation Of Pkr Activity During Hiv Infection And Cellular Stress By Pact And Trbp, Evelyn E. Chukwurah

Theses and Dissertations

A crucial component of the cellular response to stress is the attenuation of protein synthesis to allow the cell to dedicate resources for the restoration of homeostasis or towards the induction of apoptotic cell death in case the stressors overwhelm the cell. This process is itself regulated by one of the four eIF2α kinases of which PKR (Protein Kinase R) is responsible for inhibiting general translation during viral infection, oxidative stress, ER stress, heat shock or serum withdrawal.

During viral infection, PKR is transcriptionally induced by interferon but remains latent until it interacts with dsRNA. This interaction induces a conformational …