Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences Commons^™

Dynamics Of Protein-Dna Interactions Characterized By Atomic Force Microscopy, Yaqing Wang

Theses & Dissertations

This thesis describes the nanoscale studies of protein-DNA interactions with different complexities using atomic force microscopy (AFM). One of the systems deals with DNA replication rescue. To maintain the genetic integrity, replication machinery needs to minimize the error rate, repair the damages, and restart the stalled replication caused by the attacks from the environment and inside the cell. The stalled replication rescue is orchestrated by a series of proteins, for example, the DNA helicases PriA and RecG and the ssDNA binding protein (SSB).

We demonstrated that SSB stimulates the restart process in two aspects. First, SSB facilitates the binding of …

Engineering Hyaluronic Acid For Biomedical Applications, Deep S. Bhattacharya

Theses & Dissertations

This work presents research using the naturally available non- sulfated carbohydrate glycosaminoglycan hyaluronic acid (HA) for the synthesis of different chemical derivatives of HA for evaluation of binding kinetics with CD44 and P- selectin proteins for applications in fluorescence image-guided surgery. Chemical derivatives of HA such as deacetylated HA (deHA), sulfated HA (sHA), and deacetylated and sulfated HA (s-deHA) were synthesized by modulating sulfating and deacetylating reagents to alter binding specificities to CD44. Modified HA derivatives and CD44 biophysical interactions were assessed by fluorescence polarization. In silico techniques were also used to determine binding using molecular docking and MM-PBSA approaches. …