Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Synthesis Of Fluorogenic Probes For Studying Biomass Degradation And Synthesis Of New Antifungal Aminoglycosides, Qian Zhang

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

For the first project, a library of fifteen commercially purchased and synthetic fluorogenic probes were employed for the investigation of biomass degradation using extract of white-rot fungi. These discoveries prove that it is possible to employ fungi for selective degradation or release of hemicelluloses from biomass. This work is supported by Sun Grant Western Regional Center/DOT "Bioprospecting for Enzymes to Break Lignin-Hemicellulose Bond" ($300,000,09/01/2011-08/31/2013)

The second project is focused on synthesizing new aminoglycoside analogs and exploring the potential to revive traditional antibacterial kanamycin as new type of antifungal agents. Although aminoglycosides antibiotics are mainly used as antibacterial agents, this project …

Relative Toxicity Of Select Dehydropyrrolizidine Alkaloids And Evaluation Of A Heterozygous P53 Knockout Mouse Model For Dehydropyrrolizidine Alkaloid Induced Carcinogenesis, Ammon W. Brown

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Dehydropyrrolizidine alkaloids (DHPAs) are toxins produced by approximately 3% of the world’s flowering plants that can be present naturally or as contaminants in animal feed and the human food supply. Many of these compounds have been determined to cause cancer in animals and probably also cause cancer in humans. Due to the difficulty in obtaining sufficient amounts of pure DHPAs most toxicity research has been done via injection of a small amount into the abdomen of a rodent, although natural exposure is exclusively oral. For the same reason, cancer research is limited to a handful of the hundreds of known …

Computational Prediction And Rational Design Of Novel Clusters, Nanoparticles, And Solid State Materials, Alexander S. Ivanov

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The prediction of structure at the atomic level is one of the most fundamental challenges in materials science. Indeed, the structure is arguably the most important piece of information about a material, as it determines pretty much all properties of a material. Knowing the structure, one can analyze a large number of properties of a material, even before it is synthesized – the crucial importance of structure prediction for computational molecular design. This dissertation describes the technique of reliable theoretical predictions and presents the results on the successfully predicted unusual clusters, nanoparticles and solid state materials. The major part of …