Biochemistry Commons^™

Effects Of Lipid Activating Chemical Compounds On The Growth And Production Of Fatty Acids And Metabolites In Green Algae, David Nguyen, Nishikant Wase, Concetta Dirusso

UCARE: Research Products

This study examines the effects of small molecule lipid activating chemical compound, discovered from the high throughput screening (HTS) (2) methods of previous FATTT Lab studies on the growth and production of lipids and metabolites in microalgae. For this study, the effects of two lipid inducing chemical compounds from the HTS method were implemented with the microalgae strain Chlamydomonas reinhardtii CC-125. This experiment focused on scaling up to large amounts of culture, approximately 1L. These cultures were grown in specially designed large bioreactors that were able to accommodate for such large volume of algal culture. Algal cells were treated with …

Characterization Of Metabolic Network In T-Helper 2 Cells, Bailee Lichter

UCARE: Research Products

T-helper 2 (Th2) cells function in the adaptive immune system to coordinate responses to large extracellular pathogens (Luckheerham, 2012). Th2 cells are one of the differentiated subtypes cells of CD4+ T cells. CD4+ T cells recognize foreign pathogens and differenitated in specialized subtypes to affectively destroy the pathogen (Luckheerham, 2012). Upon CD4+ T cell activation, the cells undergo metabolic reprogaming, resulting in a shift in metabolism (Almedia, 2016).

We have successfully created a Th2 metabolic network model. The Th2 metabolic network model contains 1151 genes, 2601 metabolites, and 4654 reactions.

Methionine Sulfoximine: A Novel Anti Inflammatory Agent, Tyler Peters

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

METHIONINE SULFOXIMINE: A NOVEL ANTI-INFLAMMATORY AGENT

by

TYLER J. PETERS

October 2018

Advisor: William Brusilow

Major: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

The glutamine synthetase inhibitor methionine sulfoximine (MSO), shown previously to prevent death caused by an inflammatory liver response in mice, was tested on in vitro production of cytokines by mouse peritoneal macrophages triggered with lipopolysaccharide (LPS). MSO significantly reduced the production of Interleukin 6 (IL-6) and Tumor Necrosis Factor Alpha (TNFα) at 4 and 6 hours after LPS-treatment. This reduction did not result from decreased transcription of IL-6 and TNFα genes, and therefore appeared to …

Initial Functional Characterization Of Bfo 2291 And Bfo 2294 From Tannerella Forsythia; Degraders Of Chondroitin Sulfate A, Rony Eshaque, Rony Eshaque

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Periodontitis is characterized by the inflammation of the periodontal tissues in response to bacterial action. The Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2010 study shows that periodontitis ranks 6^thin the global prevalence of oral health conditions and affects 11% of the world population. It is initiated by the formation of biofilms containing different types of bacteria. These biofilms exist as dental plaque and contain three types of bacteria called Tannerella forsythia, Porphyromonasgingivalis, and Treponema denticola. These three types of bacteria are strongly associated with periodontitis and they are termed as the Red complex. The main focus of the …

Bioinformatic Interrogation Of Phosphonate Tailoring Pathways, Monica Papinski

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Phosphonates represent an underexploited class of natural products despite their tremendous potential for use in medicine and agriculture. Even less characterized are phosphonate-containing macromolecules such as cell wall lipids and glycans, distinguished by a P-C bond known to provide stability towards hydrolysis. Despite some progress made in revealing cell wall phosphonate tailoring (Pnt) pathways, several barriers impede the discovery and characterization of novel phosphonate biosynthetic pathways. Specifically, a large diversity of gene composition and arrangement is evident surrounding key genes established to participate in phosphonate tailoring pathways, which are identified alongside the presence of the ppm gene encoding the P-C …

การพัฒนาแบบจำลองเซลล์ลำไส้ของมนุษย์บนกระดาษที่มีการดัดแปรพื้นผิวและต้นแบบไบโอเซนเซอร์ไร้สายสำหรับตรวจวัดการเจริญของจุลชีพก่อโรค, ปัณณวิชญ์ ถิรบวรกิจพิธาน

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

วิทยานิพนธ์นี้เป็นการนำเสนองานวิจัย การพัฒนาวิธีการใหม่เพื่อควบคุมและเฝ้าระวังโรคติดเชื้อ โดยประกอบด้วยเนื้อหาสำคัญสองส่วน ได้แก่ (i) การพัฒนาแบบจำลองเซลล์ลำไส้ของมนุษย์ที่เพาะเลี้ยงบนกระดาษที่มีการดัดแปรพื้นผิว เพื่อใช้ประโยชน์ในการศึกษากลไกการบุกรุกของเชื้อจุลชีพก่อโรคในระบบทางเดินอาหาร และ (ii) การพัฒนาต้นแบบไบโอเซนเซอร์แบบไร้สายเพื่อการตรวจติดตามการเจริญของเชื้อจุลชีพก่อโรค โดยในส่วนแรก เซลล์ลำไส้ของมนุษย์ HT-29 จำนวน 200,000 เซลล์ ถูกเพาะเลี้ยงในบริเวณชอบน้ำของกระดาษกรอง Whatman No.1 โดยกระดาษถูกดัดแปรพื้นผิวด้วยสารแมทริกซ์นอกเซลล์ (Extracellular matrix: ECM) ชนิดต่าง ๆ ได้แก่ Matrigel, Collagen-1 และ Laminin พื้นที่เพาะเลี้ยงเซลล์มีขนาด 12.56 ตารางมิลลิเมตร ภายใต้สภาวะที่เหมาะสม เซลล์ HT-29 ที่ถูกเพาะเลี้ยงบนกระดาษ มีชีวิตรอดได้ถึง 28 วัน และแสดงลักษณะของเซลล์ที่เจริญเต็มที่ โดยมีการแสดงออกของวิลไล (villi) ที่ผิวเซลล์ด้านบน (apical) และมีการแสดงออกของโปรตีน ZO-1 ซึ่งแสดงถึงเซลล์มีการสร้างไทต์จังก์ชันเกิดขึ้น จากการใช้สารเชื่อมพันธะสำหรับเชื่อมพันธะ ECM แต่ละชนิด พบว่าเมื่อใช้สารเจนิพินในการเชื่อมพันธะ เซลล์มีชีวิตรอดทั้งหมด (100 -112.8%) ในขณะที่มีเพียง 1.1 - 67.3 % ของเซลล์รอดชีวิต หากใช้สารกลูตารัลดีไฮด์ในการเชื่อมพันธะ แต่การใช้สารเชื่อมพันธะทั้งสองชนิด ทำให้เซลล์ไม่สามารถแบ่งตัวมีรูปร่างแบบสามมิติได้ เมื่อสังเกตด้วย SEM เซลล์มีลักษณะแบน การดัดแปรพื้นผิวกระดาษด้วยสาร ECM ชนิด Matrigel ส่งผลให้เซลล์มีชีวิตรอดมากที่สุดและสาร ECM ชนิด Laminin ทำให้เซลล์เกิดการแปรสภาพ (cell differentiation) ได้ดีที่สุด งานวิจัยส่วนที่ 2 เป็นการพัฒนาไบโอเซนเซอร์ไร้สายสำหรับติดตามการเจริญของเชื้อจุลชีพก่อโรค ได้แก่ เชื้อ Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Streptococcus gordonii และ Candida albicans พบว่าเชื้อดังกล่าวสามารถสร้างไบโอฟิล์มบนผิวของขั้วไฟฟ้าคาร์บอนอสัณฐาน (glassy carbon electrode) และสามารถให้ค่าศักย์ไฟฟ้าที่เป็นลบได้ …

Targeting The Cellular Redox Environment: A Novel Approach For The Treatment Of Hematopoietic Neoplasms, Dustin W. Carroll

Theses and Dissertations--Toxicology and Cancer Biology

Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) that function to maintain the hematopoietic compartment through self-renewal and differentiation capacities, as well as their downstream progeny, are susceptible to transformation resulting in the generation of the leukemic stem cell (LSC). Chief in the factors that control HSC regulation and protection of the HSC compartment is the cellular redox environment. Deregulation of the Hematopoietic Stem/Progenitor Cell (HSPC) redox environment results in loss of HSPC function and exhaustion. The characteristic developments of HSPC exhaustion via exposure to redox stress closely mirror phenotypic traits of hematopoietic malignancies, presenting the HSPC/LSC redox environment as a potential therapeutic target. …

Influence Of Dietary Ractopamine And Supranutritional Supplementation Of Vitamin E On Proteome Profile Of Postmortem Beef Longissimus Lumborum Muscle, Hyun Mok Kim

Theses and Dissertations--Animal and Food Sciences

The effects of dietary ingredients on the proteome profile of postmortem beef longissimus lumborum (LL) muscle were evaluated. In the first experiment, the influence of dietary ractopamine on the whole-muscle proteome of beef LL was examined. Five proteins were differentially abundant between ractopamine-fed (RAC) and non-ractopamine fed (CON) groups. The differentially abundant proteins were over-abundant in RAC and were related to muscle structure development (F-actin-capping protein subunit beta-2 and PDZ and LIM domain protein-3), chaperone (heat shock protein beta-1), oxygen transportation (myoglobin), and glycolysis (L-lactate dehydrogenase A chain). These findings indicated that ractopamine influences the abundance of proteins associated with …

Size-Dependent Inhibitory Effects Of Antibiotic Drug Nanocarriers Against Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Feng Ding, Preeyaporn Songkiatisak, Pavan Kumar Cherukuri, Tao Huang, Xiao-Hong Nancy Xu

Chemistry & Biochemistry Faculty Publications

Multidrug membrane transporters (efflux pumps) are responsible for multidrug resistance (MDR) and the low efficacy of therapeutic drugs. Noble metal nanoparticles (NPs) possess a high surface-area-to-volume ratio and size-dependent plasmonic optical properties, enabling them to serve both as imaging probes to study sized-dependent MDR and as potential drug carriers to circumvent MDR and enhance therapeutic efficacy. To this end, in this study, we synthesized three different sizes of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs), 2.4 ± 0.7, 13.0 ± 3.1, and 92.6 ± 4.4 nm, functionalized their surface with a monolayer of 11-amino-1-undecanethiol (AUT), and covalently conjugated them with antibiotics (ofloxacin, Oflx) …

Algae Biofuel Triacylglyceride Transesterification Optimization, Erik Ferenczy

Senior Honors Theses

Algae biofuels may hold the key to solving the problem of fossil fuel consumption by being comparable in content, renewable, and carbon-neutral. Many biofuel researchers and corporations have undertaken to increase the production rate or capacity of triacylglycerides (TAG), the fat precursor to biodiesel fuel produced by algae, in algae cultures and published articles documenting their findings. This research is devoted to evaluating the effect of water that may be present in samples on the conversion efficiency of TAG into fatty acid methyl esters (FAME), commonly referred to as biodiesel. Therefore, that efficiency was studied to find the water content …

Split Deoxyribozyme Probe For Efficient Detection Of Highly Structured Rna Targets, Sheila Raquel Solarez

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Transfer RNAs (tRNAs) are known for their role as adaptors during translation of the genetic information and as regulators for gene expression; uncharged tRNAs regulate global gene expression in response to changes in amino acid pools in the cell. Aminoacylated tRNAs play a role in non-ribosomal peptide bond formation, post-translational protein labeling, modification of phospholipids in the cell membrane, and antibiotic biosynthesis. ^[1] tRNAs have a highly stable structure that can present a challenge for their detection using conventional techniques. ^[2] To enable signal amplification and lower detection limits, a split probe - split deoxyribozyme (sDz or BiDz) probe, which …

Discovery Of Novel Muraymycin Antibiotics And Insight Into The Biosynthetic Pathway, Zheng Cui

Theses and Dissertations--Pharmacy

New antibiotics with novel targets or mechanisms of action are needed to counter the steady emergence of bacterial pathogens that are resistant to antibiotics used in the clinic. MraY, a promising novel target for antibiotic development, initiates the lipid cycle for the biosynthesis of peptidoglycan cell wall, which is essential for the survival of most, if-not-all, bacteria. MraY is an enzyme that catalyzes the transfer and attachment of phospho-MurNAc-pentapeptide to a lipid carrier, undecaprenylphosphate. Muraymycins are recently discovered lipopeptidyl nucleoside antibiotics that exhibit remarkable antibiotic activity against Gram-positive as well as Gram-negative bacteria by inhibiting MraY. We conducted a thorough …

Antibiotic Effects Of Dimethyl Sulfoxide And Synthetic Polyphenols On E. Coli Cells, Camila Cardenas

Theses and Dissertations

There is increasing interest in polyphenols due to their potential medicinal and antibiotic applications. Naturally occurring polyphenols, such as curcumin, have garnered tremendous attention. However, synthetic polyphenols commonly used in biochemistry experiments have not been sufficiently explored. The purpose of this study is to determine the effect of dimethyl sulfoxide on the cellular uptake of synthetic polyphenols. Three synthetic polyphenols (Phenol Red, Congo Red, and Bromophenol Blue) were tested for their antibiotic properties and compared to the antibiotic activity of curcumin. Our results show that phenol red does not interact with the bacterial membrane even in the presence of 30% …

Prebiotic Potential Of Aerosols, Emma Rae Shipley

Honors Program Theses

A triple quadrupole gas chromatograpy mass spectrometer (GC/MS/QQQ) was used to determine prebiotic molecules of interest in plasma and photochemical aerosols. Glycolic acid was further studied using isotopically doped gases. Plasma and photochemical aerosol analogs were shown to have nucleobases and a few amino acids. Each type of aerosol was also the source of glycolic acid, a precursor to glycine. Using ¹⁸O doped CO, it was determined that contamination was not a source of oxygen in the samples. Using different combinations of ¹³C doped gases in 1:1 combinations of CO and CH₄, it was determined that …

New Insights Into The "Manna From Heaven" Hypothesis, Clare Laubenthal

Honors Program Theses

Titan’s atmosphere is unique in that its atmospheric chemistry is thought to be similar to that of the Earth’s atmosphere during the Archean Era, when bacterial life dominated the Earth¹. Tholins form as a result of the radiation of organic gases by ultraviolet light. These molecules are considered alike to the prebiotic hazes that formed in the atmosphere of Earth during the Archean Era and which allowed for the eventual development of microbial life² . This study investigated whether Earth soil bacteria can grow, using laboratory created tholin analogs, or aerosols, as a nutrient source. This study …

Altering Oligomerization Of Epha2 Via Mutations In The Intracellular Domain, Ryan W. Lingerak

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Eph receptor tyrosine kinases (RTKs) are activated by membrane-bound ligands called ephrins. Eph RTKs are divided into two subclasses, each activated by a specific classes of the ligand ephrin. The overexpression of Eph receptors is correlated to cancer cell metastasis in several different types of cancers. Studies with the EphA2 extracellular domain (ECD) and ephrinA1 ligand have shown that upon binding of ephrin to the receptor, EphA2 undergoes increased oligomerization and activation. This indicates that oligomerization is intimately connected to kinase activity. High resolution crystal structures of the EphA2 ECD have revealed some details of these ligand bound oligomers, as …

Surface And Structural Modification Of Carbon Electrodes For Electroanalysis And Electrochemical Conversion, Yan Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Chemistry

Electrocatalysis is key to both sensitive electrochemical sensing and efficient electrochemical energy conversion. Despite high catalytic activity, traditional metal catalysts have poor stability, low selectivity, and high cost. Metal-free, carbon-based materials are emerging as alternatives to metal-based catalysts because of their attractive features including natural abundance, environmental friendliness, high electrical conductivity, and large surface area. Altering surface functionalities and heteroatom doping are effective ways to promote catalytic performance of carbon-based catalysts. The first chapter of this dissertation focuses on developing electrode modification methods for electrochemical sensing of biomolecules. After electrochemical pretreatment, glassy carbon demonstrates impressive figures-of-merit in detecting small, redox-active …

Esope-Equivalent Pulsing Protocols For Calcium Electroporation: An In Vitro Optimization Study On 2 Cancer Cell Models, Stefania Romeo, Anna Sannino, Maria Rosaria Scarfi, P. Thomas Vernier, Ruggero Cadossi, Julie Gehl, Olga Zeni

Bioelectrics Publications

Reversible electroporation is used to increase the uptake of chemotherapeutic drugs in local tumor treatment (electrochemotherapy) by applying the pulsing protocol (8 rectangular pulses, 1000 V/cm, 100 µs) standardized in the framework of the European Standard Operating Procedure on Electrochemotherapy multicenter trial. Currently, new electrochemotherapy strategies are under development to extend its applicability to tumors with different histology. Electrical parameters and drug type are critical factors. A possible approach is to test pulse parameters different from European Standard Operating Procedure on Electrochemotherapy but with comparable electroporation yield (European Standard Operating Procedure on Electrochemotherapy-equivalent protocols). Moreover, the use of non-toxic drugs …

Dynamic Control Of Particle Separation In Deterministic Lateral Displacement Separator With Viscoelastic Fluids, Yuke Li, Hongna Zhang, Yongyao Li, Xiaobin Li, Jian Wu, Shizhi Qian, Fengchen Li

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

We proposed an innovative method to achieve dynamic control of particle separation by employing viscoelastic fluids in deterministic lateral displacement (DLD) arrays. The effects of shear-thinning and elasticity of working fluids on the critical separation size in DLD arrays are investigated. It is observed that each effect can lead to the variation of the critical separation size by approximately 40%. Since the elasticity strength of the fluid is related to the shear rate, the dynamic control can for the first time be easily realized through tuning the flow rate in microchannels.

Morphological, Genetic And Biochemical Characterization Of The Anti-Malarial Herb, Artemisia Annua Germplasm Collection At West Virginia University, Delini K. Samarasinghe

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Malaria is one of the deadliest diseases in human history. Nearly half of the world’s population, is at the risk in 106 countries. Only in 2016, this disease killed about 445,000 people, 72% of them being children under age five. It also accounts for US $12 billion dollars of direct costs in Africa alone. Five different species of Plasmodium cause malaria but P. falciparum is the most detrimental one, causing 50% of all malaria cases and is considered as the deadliest parasite in humans. Artemisinin (ART), a 15 C sesquiterpenoid is currently the only precursor to the most effective anti-malarial …