Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Investigations Of Prokaryotic Defense Systems, Hannah Domgaard

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Bacteria are constantly threatened with infection by mobile genetic elements (MGE) such as bacteriophage and plasmids. Bacteriophage and plasmids require the bacteria's cellular infrastructure to replicate their genomes. Rampant replication can lead to cell death which is one reason why bacteria have developed a diverse array of immune systems to prevent or limit infection. This thesis studies three types of bacterial immune systems, type IV-A CRISPR-Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeat –CRISPR associated), type V-A2 CRISPR-Cas systems, and Wadjet systems.

The type IV-A system lies adjacent to a dinG-like helicase gene. Research has shown that this system can target …

Development Of In Situ Second-Order Nonlinear Optical Scatterings For Molecular Behaviors At Aerosol Surfaces, Yuqin Qian

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Aerosol particles are one of the most important components of the atmosphere. During the growth of aerosol particles, they directly or indirectly affect air quality, human health, and environmental chemistry. Therefore, understanding the chemical and physical properties of such particles is an important scientific, engineering, and medical issue. The growth of aerosol particles in the atmosphere is closely related to the chemical structure at its surface, as well as the heterogeneous reactions which take place at and below the particle’s surface. However, there is a lack of suitable surface-specific analytical techniques which directly measure the chemical structure of aerosol particle …

Functional Characterization Of The Newly Discovered Type V Crispr-Cas Protein Cas12a2, Dylan J. Keiser

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Similarly to people, bacteria are under the treat of infection by viruses. To circumvent these threats, bacteria evolve complex immune systems. Our understanding of some of these immune systems has led to many advancements in the field of Biotechnology including tools that made expressing proteins for study in a lab easier, tools that revolutionized the feasibility of gene editing, and tools that could change the way we think about viral diagnostics and cancer therapeutics. A certain type of immune system that bacteria use to fight virus is called a CRISPR system. Presented here is work to understand the function of …

Pesticide-Leaf Interactions And Their Implications For Pesticide Fate Modeling, Ashlie Kinross

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The work described here provides measured data to improve the understanding of the interaction between a pesticide and leaf surface after application. Two methods were developed, one using a newly introduced instrument, for the extraction of pesticides from leaves. This is required to measure the concentration of pesticide in the leaves. Using one of the developed extraction methods, measurements were made to determine how a pesticide equilibrates between a leaf and the air above it. These measurements were incorporated into a pesticide fate model that predicts how a pesticide moves through the environment after application to an agricultural field. The …

Stability, Electronic Structure, And Nonlinear Optical Properties In Clusters And Materials: A Synergistic Experimental-Computational Analysis, Maksim Kulichenko

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

The main objective of Chemistry as a science is an understanding of how and why certain atoms are bonded together and what effects these bonds cause. Modern computational chemistry offers a wide range of tools that greatly assist the exploration of vast chemical space replacing expensive trial-and-error experimental approaches. Computational chemistry may serve to characterize newly synthesized compounds and provide atomic scale insights inaccessible to experimentalists’ vision. Moreover, predictive power of computational chemistry may be used as a guidance for future experiments and for the rational design of new compounds with desired properties.

This dissertation demonstrates the capabilities of joint …

Designing And Decoding Chemical Bonds: A Computational Pipeline Backed Up By Magnetic Criteria And Experiment, Nikita Fedik

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

You may find plenty of definitions of chemistry but all of them, explicitly or not, are centered around chemical bonds. When we say “chemical properties”, “reactivity”, “stability”, “structure” etc., we have in mind chemical bonds and their reorganization which almost completely defines the behavior of the matter. Why some materials are ultrahard and can cut through steel while others are so soft that you can form them with your bare hands? You probably have already guessed that it occurs because their chemical bonding is very different. Although the elemental composition could be the same! In this Dissertation, we report results …