Biology Commons^™

Mesenchymal Stem Cells In The Treatment Of Osteogenesis Imperfecta, Erica Lang, Julie A. Semon

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) is a Disease Caused by Mutations in Different Genes Resulting in Mild, Severe, or Lethal Forms. with No Cure, Researchers Have Investigated the Use of Cell Therapy to Correct the Underlying Molecular Defects of OI. Mesenchymal Stem Cells (MSCs) Are of Particular Interest Because of their Differentiation Capacity, Immunomodulatory Effects, and their Ability to Migrate to Sites of Damage. MSCs Can Be Isolated from Different Sources, Expanded in Culture, and Have Been Shown to Be Safe in Numerous Clinical Applications. This Review Summarizes the Preclinical and Clinical Studies of MSCs in the Treatment of OI. Altogether, the …

Antimicrobial Peptides In Transgenic Silkworm Silk, David Jaden Turner

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Overview: People in India and China have produced silk textiles for thousands of years. Silk is a biodegradable, biocompatible compound used in the production of clothing, bedding, furniture, industrial materials, and medical applications. Over the last 30 years, research has increasingly investigated silk’s antimicrobial effects and how to augment its natural abilities. Antimicrobial peptides, or AMPs, are also an area of increasing interest as the rise of antibiotic resistance reduces the efficacy of current treatments. This project plans to systematically synthesize a fusion protein that incorporates the beneficial properties of each constituent into commercial silkworms.

Innovation: This project seeks to …

Cytotoxic Activity Of Salvia Officinalis Extract Mediated By The Inhibition Of Jak2 In Breast Cancer, Salma Alawadi Dawood

Theses and Dissertations

Background: Breast cancer is the most common type of invasive cancer in women in their forties and fifties. Recent evidence suggests that JAK2/STAT3 signaling is constitutively active in breast cancer. Previous studies suggest that plant extracts, including Salvia Officinalis, have strong cytotoxic effects on breast cancer cells. The differential expression of miRNAs is also strongly linked to cancer development.

Aim: In the current study, we hypothesize that S. Officinalis extract suppresses JAK2 expression and has strong anticancer potential in MCF7 breast cancer cell lines.

Methods: GC-MS analysis showed the presence of flavonoids in dried leaf of …

Pleurotus Spp. As Agents Of Mycoremediation: A Review, Colin A. Innes

University Honors Theses

Elemental and molecular contaminants of anthropogenic origin represent an increasing threat to virtually all terrestrial and aquatic environments as well as their surrounding atmosphere. The decontamination and restoration of these environments pose a significant and expensive challenge. Although chemical treatment or physical removal of contaminated substrates often is the most direct response to eliminate contaminants, due to the complexity and sensitivity of many natural systems, technologies involving biological remediation can provide viable alternatives. While plant, bacterial, and fungal organisms have the abilities to accumulate or to metabolize toxic compounds, fungal organisms are uniquely suited to do so. Their fast growth …

Vertebrate Animal Behaviors And Abundances On Estuarine Shorelines Stabilized With Biodegradable Materials Utilizing Wildlife Cameras, Katherine Guise

The Pegasus Review: UCF Undergraduate Research Journal

Living shoreline stabilization is a restoration technique that utilizes natural materials as breakwaters, plus vegetation landward of the breakwaters, to protect coastlines. This research does not provide information about how new, biodegradable restoration materials affect vertebrates that utilize these shorelines. For this project, I monitored 18 restoration sites along Canaveral National Seashore with wildlife trail cameras: 3 made with cement-infused jute breakwaters, 3 with metal gabion oyster shell breakwaters, and 4 with previously used breakwaters manufactured from plastic mesh oyster shell bags. This project used 4 sites as positive controls (intact vegetation) and 4 as negative controls (highly eroded, no …

Utilizing Few-Shot Meta Learning Algorithms For Medical Image Segmentation, Nick Littlefield

Thinking Matters Symposium

Deep learning models can be difficult to train because they require large amounts of data, which we usually do not have or are too expensive to get or annotate. To overcome this problem, we can use few-shot meta-learning, which allows us to train deep learning models with little data. Using a few examples, meta-learning, or learning-to-learn, aims to use the experience learned during training to generalize to unknown tasks. Medical imaging is an industry where it is particularly useful, as there is limited publicly available data due to patient privacy concerns and annotating costs.

This project examines how meta-learning performs …

Reintroducing Hemp (Rongony) In The Material Palette Of Madagascar: A Study On The Potential Of Hemp Clay Components And Its Impact On Social And Ecological Communities., Henintsoa Thierry Andrianambinina

Masters Theses

When mentioning the word hemp, especially in the local language of Madagascar, the literal translation does not set it apart from marijuana, as they are both called “rongony” - creating the stigma around hemp as the negative stereotype of marijuana. However, the material has been used by the ancestors of Madagascar, as well as across cultures, in its fibrous form to produce fabrication like textile goods and packaging. During colonization, the prohibition of hemp intensified, and since then, any activity related to either of these plants is prohibited and will end in severe punitive measures. This thesis explores the strengths …

Illuminating The Drivers Of Genomic Diversification In Lamprologine Cichlids Of The Lower Congo River, Naoko P. Kurata

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Freshwater fishes are extraordinarily diverse, considering their available habitats represent a tiny proportion of the earth’s surface. Rivers connect heterogeneous habitats in a linear form and provide excellent simplified models to understand how aquatic biodiversity evolves. In particular, the lower Congo River (LCR) in west Central Africa consists of a dynamic hydroscape exhibiting extraordinary aquatic biodiversity, endemicity, and morphological and ecological specialization. This system is thus an excellent natural laboratory for understanding complex speciation and population diversification processes. In my research, I explore various drivers of diversification, and adaptive evolution in rheophilic lamprologine cichlids endemic to the LCR, including Lamprologus …

Community-Derived Core Concepts For Neuroscience Higher Education, Audrey Chen, Kimberley A. Phillips, Jennifer E. Schaefer, Patrick M. Sonner

Biology Faculty Publications

Core concepts provide a framework for organizing facts and understanding in neuroscience higher education curricula. Core concepts are overarching principles that identify patterns in neuroscience processes and phenomena and can be used as a foundational scaffold for neuroscience knowledge. The need for community-derived core concepts is pressing, because both the pace of research and number of neuroscience programs are rapidly expanding. While general biology and many subdisciplines within biology have identified core concepts, neuroscience has yet to establish a community-derived set of core concepts for neuroscience higher education. We used an empirical approach involving more than 100 neuroscience educators to …

Flash-Rt: Using High-Dose Radiation For Clinical Radiation Therapy, Deja M. Stubbs

University Honors Theses

This paper is a literature review on the possible mechanisms behind the FLASH effect and why such research can advance the world of radiology treatment by modifying current clinical linear accelerators to produce ultra-high doses of radiation. Radiation Therapy, also known as external Beam Radiation Therapy, is a common type of cancer treatment. Globally, cancer is the second-leading cause of death, but has seen an increase in survival rates over the past couple of years. Cancer can develop in almost any part of the body since cancer is defined as uncontrolled cell growth. The FLASH Effect is seen when treating …

Copus Profiles Paper Data, Jamie Jensen, Rebecca L. Sansom, Jennifer B. Nielson, Richard E. West, Geoffrey Wright, Bryn St. Clair

ScholarsArchive Data

COPUS profile data, interview transcripts

A Baseline Assessment Of Migratory And Resident Bird Use Of A Prairie Restoration Site In Eastern Washington, Madilyn J. Odiorne, Brynn A. Richey, Ruby L. Hammond

2023 Symposium

Prairies, and other types of grassland ecosystems, have suffered some of the most profound losses worldwide, due to anthropogenic factors such as fossil fuel extraction, agriculture, and climate change. Likewise, organisms inhabiting grassland ecosystems have become extirpated across much of their historical range, not the least of which has been a 50% decline in grassland birds since the 1960s. In response to losses of intact prairie in eastern Washington, a 120-ac site has been established on the EWU campus to regenerate native prairie and monitor changes in the ecosystem as native plants recolonize and replace non-natives. Because birds are an …

Development Of Reverse Genetics Tools In The Two-Spotted Spider Mite Tetranychus Urticae, Nivitha Bhaskar

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Tetranychus urticae, commonly known as the two-spotted spider mite, poses a significant threat to agriculture due to its ability to feed on a diverse range of plant hosts and its strong detoxification abilities in overcoming xenobiotic response. With global warming projected to increase spider mite infestations, it is vital to study the detoxification genes that enable the mite to adapt and survive. The spider mite genome sequence reveals a unique set of detoxification genes that can be studied using RNAi as a promising reverse genetic tool. However, the current genetic toolkit requires improvement. This study examined the effectiveness of …

Effects Of Climate Change On Human Health, Sara El Houzaly, Richa Gupta

Publications and Research

The effects of climate change are evident worldwide as average global land and air temperatures have been rising, glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking with the concomitant rise in sea levels, extreme weather events have become more frequent, and oceans are warming and acidifying. Humanity is facing a big environmental challenge which not only impacts our habitat but will also have ramifications on our health. The present review describes a detailed examination of the scientific evidence proving the relationship between climate change and various fatal human diseases in different geographical regions. Our findings indicate that variations in the patterns of …

Student Perceptions Of Scholarly Writing: Student Generation Of Collaborative Rubrics To Score Scholarly Writing, Terri Enslein, Ed Kosack, Hanna Wetzel

Faculty Scholarship

Scholarly writing is an important skill in all fields of study. Despite a strong focus on writing in many courses, faculty and students have disparate expectations related to scholarly writing. Herein, a classroom exercise is presented in which students were asked to develop a rubric that would be used to evaluate their summative writing assessment. Students were provided with a list of elements that commonly represent good scholarly writing, asked to define what effectively demonstrating these elements looks like, and asked to assign the weight that would be given to each element. The weights given to each element by students …

Land And Energy, Devan Viani

Biology Student Scholarship

Land use has and will continue to be a complicated topic. We need land to succeed as a country and a species, but it is equally as important to keep the land as pristine as possible to not affect natural ecosystems. As population continues to increase, urbanization and economic growth has inevitably had an impact on climate change.¹ Parallel to an increase in land development is an increase in power generation. As cities grow, technology evolves, and energy use goes up. With this increase in technology, new sources of power generation are emerging. While fossil fuels have always been the …

Precipitation Effects On Butterfly Species Richness, Maggie Ritchie

Biology Student Scholarship

Butterflies are important pollinators that have been impacted due to climate change(1). Studies have looked at how the increasing temperatures and precipitation due to climate change may be playing a role in decreasing populations among some species in Mediterranean climates(2). However, the effects of precipitation have not been considered when looking at changing butterfly populations around the United States. Therefore, increasing precipitation amounts due to climate change may contribute to the decreasing populations of butterflies in Massachusetts.

The Effect Of Nuclear Power On Carbon Intensity, Lukas Mullaney

Biology Student Scholarship

The world is currently facing one of the biggest threats to the environment in its history: the warming of the Earth’s surface due to climate change. One major contributor is the release of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere by humans. To reduce these emissions, countries are making a concerted effort to invest in more sustainable energy sources. Nuclear power is one green energy source that can potentially support the transition to lower carbon emissions. Nuclear power plants release no carbon emissions during the generation of electricity. The only emissions are a result of maintenance, such as …

Effect Of Natural Disasters On Coastal Human Populations Of The Southeastern U.S., Caitlin Mchugh

Biology Student Scholarship

Due to climate change, extreme weather events and natural disasters are becoming more prevalent, and the severity of these events is increasing (Sheldon & Zhan, 2022). Over the last 40 years, the number of billion-dollar natural disasters has gone up. The U.S, averaged 3 billion-dollar disasters per year in the 1980s compared to the average 13 per year in the 2010s (USAFacts, 2023). With natural disasters comes loss of life, infrastructure, and resources that can leave a physical and economic toll on communities for many years if not generations. While some global studies have found that natural disasters increase households’ …

Element Levels In Soil Depend On Elevation, Sean Harris

Biology Student Scholarship

Elements, such as arsenic, copper, phosphorus, and calcium, in soil can help biological processes if content levels are not too low or excessive. Arsenic in soil is toxic at high levels and so too much is harmful to vegetation. Copper is important for plants because it helps with chlorophyll and seed production. Phosphorus helps with plant growth, especially for new seedlings. Calcium in soil is not completely needed at high levels, but it does strengthen plants’ health. However, with factors such as different environments, average precipitation levels, and elevation levels in different counties in the Northeast, element content level differ. …