Genomics Commons^™

Knowledge And Attitudes Of Pharmacogenetics Among Canadian Nurses: Implications For Nursing Education, Noopur Swadas, Sarah Dewell, Sandra J. Davidson

Quality Advancement in Nursing Education - Avancées en formation infirmière

Pharmacogenetic testing is used to tailor medication recommendations based on an individual's genetic makeup. Increased precision in prescribing medication through the use of genetics leads to a reduction in adverse drug reactions resulting in decreased morbidity and mortality. Due to the noted benefits to patient health outcomes and reduction in healthcare costs, a growing number of Canadian health centers and community pharmacies are beginning to offer pharmacogenetic testing. Previous studies indicate that Canadian nurses have minimal education in genomics; however, there has been an increase in attention to nursing roles in the implementation of genomic health practices in recent ...

Genetic Variations In The Myostatin Gene Among Irish Cattle Breeds, Cliona Ann Ryan

ORBioM (Open Research BioSciences Meeting)

No abstract provided.

Unraveling The Genetic Architecture Of Somatic Embryogenesis In Upland Cotton, Adam M. Canal

All Theses

Somatic embryogenesis is the de novo development of asexual embryos because of the plasticity of the plant cell. In tissue culture, the biochemical and genetic mechanisms of dedifferentiated callus tissues can be reprogrammed to transdifferentiate into developed, polarized embryos, which can ultimately regenerate into whole plants. Although this rarely occurs in nature, scientists have exploited this process for decades to regenerate whole plants following gene transformation or for micropropagation. While some species are amenable to in vitro regeneration, upland cotton is particularly recalcitrant, with regenerative potential being confined to only several genotypes. The lack of elite, regenerable genotypes greatly restricts ...

Mechanisms By Which Xenorhabdus Nematophila Interacts With Hosts Using Integrated -Omics Approaches, Nicholas C. Mucci

Doctoral Dissertations

Nearly all organisms exist in proximity to microbes. These microbes perform most of the essential metabolic processes necessary for homeostasis, forming the nearly hidden support system of Earth. Microbial symbiosis, which is defined as the long-term physical association between host and microbes, relies on communication between the microbial community and their host organism. These interactions among higher order organisms (such as animals, plants, and fungi) and their bacteria links metabolic processes between interkingdom consortia. Many questions on microbial behavior within a host remain poorly understood, such as the colonization efficiency among different microbial species, or how environmental context changes their ...

Multi-Omic Systems Biological Analysis Of Host-Microbe Interactions, Piet Jones

Doctoral Dissertations

Systems biology offers the opportunity to understand the complex mechanisms of various biological phenomena. The wealth of data that is produced, at an increasing rate, provides the potential to meet this opportunity. Here we take an applied approach to integrate multiple omic level data sources in order to generate biologically relevant hypotheses. We apply a novel analysis pipeline to model both, in concert, the microbial and transcriptomic signature from COVID-19 positive patients. We show patients may suffer from an increased microbial burden, with an increased pathogen potential. Gene expression evidence further shows patients may exhibit a compromised barrier immunity, owing ...

Scalable Software Infrastructure For The Lab And A Specific Investigation Of The Yeast Transcription Factor Eds1, Chase Mateusiak

McKelvey School of Engineering Theses & Dissertations

Individual biology labs handle increasingly large data sets. Ensuring accurate data entry, consistent sample metadata, and ease of access to the data once it is stored, are critical for both the integrity of analysis as well as productivity of the lab. Chapter 1 one of this thesis describes three implementations of software meant to facilitate handling data and metadata in the lab as the size of the data and complexity of analysis scale. The first piece of software is a database and entry interface for storing a large and varied amount of data on biological samples. The second is a ...

Exploration Of Genes Controlling Grain Yield Heterosis In Hybrid Wheat (Triticum Aestivum L.) Utilizing 3ʹ Rna Sequencing, Nichole Miller

Theses, Dissertations, and Student Research in Agronomy and Horticulture

The implementation and future success of hybrid wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is impacted by breeders’ inability to create consistent high yielding, high heterosis hybrids. This research addresses this problem by conducting an exploration of transcriptomes from hybrids and parent lines to determine what genes are active in heterotic or non-heterotic hybrids and how their level of expression can explain the phenotype of grain yield heterosis. Using hybrids that showed positive mid-parent heterosis (MPH), classified as heterotic in our study, and negative or no difference MPH hybrids, classified as non-heterotic, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) potentially related to heterosis and hybrid yield ...

Spr-5; Met-2 Maternal Reprogramming Cooperates With The Dream Complex To Regulate Developmental Cell Fates, Jazmin Dozier, Sandra Nguyen, Brandon Carpenter

Symposium of Student Scholars

Histone methylation is a post-transcriptional modification to the N-terminal tails of histone core proteins that regulates DNA accessibility, and consequently, gene expression. Like DNA, histone methylation can be inherited between generations, and is highly regulated during embryonic development. At fertilization, histone methylation must undergo maternal reprogramming to reset the epigenetic landscape in the new zygote. During maternal reprogramming of histone methylation in the nematode, C. elegans, H3K4me (a modification associated with active transcription) is removed by the H3K4 demethylase, SPR-5, and H3K9me (a modification associated with transcriptional repression) is subsequently added by the histone methyltransferase, MET-2. Recently, it was demonstrated ...

Microbial Diversity And Community Structure In Sediments Associated With The Seagrass (Thallassia Testudinum) In Apalachicola Bay, Florida, Rahma Ahmed, Thomas Mcelroy, Troy Mutchler

Symposium of Student Scholars

Seagrass is an angiosperm which provides many ecosystem services in coastal areas, such as providing food, shelter and nurseries for many species, and decreasing the impact of waves on shorelines. A global assessment reported that 29% of known seagrass meadows are in a state of decline due to the effects of human activity. Seagrass is commonly found in shallow marine waters where they form meadows containing a microbiome that plays an important role in providing nutrients for seagrass growth, though little is known about the microorganisms within the seagrass meadow sediments. Our project collected sediments from seagrass meadows and adjacent ...

Identifying Molecular Markers For Early Detection Of Toxic Cyanobacteria And Dinoflagellate, Shafqat F. Ehsan

St. Mary's University Honors Theses and Projects

Harmful algal Blooms (HABs) develop when algal colonies grow out of control, causing toxicity or injury to humans, fish, shellfish, marine mammals, and birds. Most HABs of public health concern in saltwater generally are caused by eukaryotic dinoflagellates and diatoms. Prokaryotic cyanobacteria are usually responsible for freshwater blooms although they can contribute to saltwater and brackish blooms too. A common monitoring target of both groups is the saxitoxin-encoding genes. Saxitoxin(STX) is responsible for Paralytic shellfish poisoning, a foodborne illness developed from consumption of STX contaminated shellfish. Each cyanobacterial SXT gene cluster contains a set of core genes, common to ...

Genomic Organization And Expression Of The Wc1 Hybrid Coreceptor And Pattern Recognition Receptor On Porcine Gamma Delta T Cells, Lauren Le Page

Doctoral Dissertations

gd T cells are a crucial component of the immune response to a number of increasingly relevant and largely zoonotic pathogens to which efficacious vaccination is lacking. In ruminants and swine, gd T cells represent a major population of peripheral blood and epithelial tissue-resident lymphocytes. gdT cells respond to both protein and non-protein antigens independently of MHC presentation and possess immunological memory. Upon activation, gamma delta T cells illicit a variety of effector functions and play an indispensable role of orchestrating the downstream immune response. These characteristics make gamma delta T cells a promising candidate for recruitment by vaccination, however ...

Applications Of Nanopore Dna Sequencing For Improved Genome Assembly, Daniel Giguere

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

An organism's genome is the ultimate determinant of its functional potential. Understanding genomes is therefore essential to understand function, and a foundational knowledge of a genome is required transfer functions to and from microorganisms of interest. Sequencing DNA using nanopores is a recent advance that resolves limitations of previous technologies, enabling an improved understanding of genomes. For this thesis, I improved our understanding of microbial genomes by developing novel approaches to analyze long read sequencing data, setting the foundation for future synthetic biology work.

Long sequencing reads have enabled routine assembly of complete bacterial genomes by directly sequencing DNA ...

The Large And Small Of It: The Microbiome And Metagenomics, Austin Hopkins, Elaina Gollmar, Jessica Fernandez, Shawn Wolf, Austin Hilverding, Andrew M. Roecker

Pharmacy and Wellness Review

Metagenomics, the analysis of the microbial genome, permits scientists to understand the influences of external sources including diet, metabolism and antibiotics on the human microbiome. Research has revealed the possibility of a core symbiosis between humans and bacteria. The main role of the human microbiome is to aid in digestion, but identified ancillary roles include immunologic homeostasis and infection prevention. Quantifying the composition and variability of the microbiome will help lead to future treatments or preventive strategies against unhealthy change. A variety of methods may be used to define the microbiome, and 16S amplicon sequencing is primarily utilized today. Probiotics ...

Characterization Of Streptomyces Nymphaeiformis Sp. Nov., And Its Taxonomic Relatedness To Other Polyhydroxybutyrate-Degrading Streptomycetes, Gary R. Hix, Muhammad S. Khan, Mikayla T. Miller, Elisha C. Napier, Allison L. O'Brien, Roger P. White, Stephen F. Baron Ph.D.

Biology Faculty Scholarship

A polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB)-degrading actinomycete, strain SFB5A^T, was identified as a species of Streptomyces based on its membrane fatty acid profile and the presence of LL-diaminopimelic acid in the cell wall. It formed sporulating mycelia on most agar media, but flat or wrinkled, moist colonies on trypticase soy agar. Spores were smooth, cylindrical, and borne on long, straight to flexuous chains. It produced a light brown diffusible pigment, but not melanin. Comparison of genomic digital DNA–DNA hybridization (dDDH) and average nucleotide identity (ANI) values indicated that strain SFB5A^T was related to Streptomyces litmocidini JCM 4394^T , Streptomyces ...

Rare Coding Variants In Rcn3 Are Associated With Blood Pressure, Karen Y. He, Tanika N. Kelly, Heming Wang, Jingjing Liang, Luke Zhu, Brian E. Cade, Themistocles L. Assimes, Lewis C. Becker, Amber L. Beitelshees, Lawrence F. Bielak, Adam P. Bress, Jennifer A. Brody, Yen-Pei Christy Chang, Yi-Cheng Chang, Paul S. De Vries, Ravindranath Duggirala, Ervin R. Fox, Nora Franceschini, Anna L. Furniss, Yan Gao, Donna K. Arnett

Epidemiology and Environmental Health Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: While large genome-wide association studies have identified nearly one thousand loci associated with variation in blood pressure, rare variant identification is still a challenge. In family-based cohorts, genome-wide linkage scans have been successful in identifying rare genetic variants for blood pressure. This study aims to identify low frequency and rare genetic variants within previously reported linkage regions on chromosomes 1 and 19 in African American families from the Trans-Omics for Precision Medicine (TOPMed) program. Genetic association analyses weighted by linkage evidence were completed with whole genome sequencing data within and across TOPMed ancestral groups consisting of 60,388 individuals ...

Transposon- And Genome Dynamics In The Fungal Genus Neurospora: Insights From Nearly Gapless Genome Assemblies, Diem Nguyen, Valentina Peona, Per Unneberg, Alexander Suh, Patric Jern, Hanna Johannesson

Fungal Genetics Reports

A large portion of nuclear DNA is composed of transposable element (TE) sequences, whose transposition is controlled by diverse host defense strategies in order to maintain genomic integrity. One such strategy is the fungal-specific Repeat-Induced Point mutation (RIP) that hyper-mutates repetitive DNA sequences. While RIP is found across Fungi, it has been shown to vary in efficiency. The filamentous ascomycete Neurospora crassa has been a pioneer in the study of RIP, but data on TEs and RIP from other species in the genus is limited. In this study, we investigated 18 nearly gapless genome assemblies of ten Neurospora species, which ...

Long-Read Sequencing Of The Zebrafish Genome Reorganizes Genomic Architecture, Yelena Chernyavskaya, Xiaofei Zhang, Jinze Liu, Jessica S. Blackburn

Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry Faculty Publications

BACKGROUND: Nanopore sequencing technology has revolutionized the field of genome biology with its ability to generate extra-long reads that can resolve regions of the genome that were previously inaccessible to short-read sequencing platforms. Over 50% of the zebrafish genome consists of difficult to map, highly repetitive, low complexity elements that pose inherent problems for short-read sequencers and assemblers.

RESULTS: We used long-read nanopore sequencing to generate a de novo assembly of the zebrafish genome and compared our assembly to the current reference genome, GRCz11. The new assembly identified 1697 novel insertions and deletions over one kilobase in length and placed ...

Apoe Genetics Influence Murine Gut Microbiome, Diana J. Zajac, Stefan J. Green, Lance A. Johnson, Steven Estus

Physiology Faculty Publications

Apolipoprotein E (APOE) alleles impact pathogenesis and risk for multiple human diseases, making them primary targets for disease treatment and prevention. Previously, we and others reported an association between APOE alleles and the gut microbiome. Here, we evaluated effects of APOE heterozygosity and tested whether these overall results extended to mice maintained under ideal conditions for microbiome analyses. To model human APOE alleles, this study used APOE targeted replacement (TR) mice on a C57Bl/6 background. To minimize genetic drift, homozygous APOE3 mice were crossed to homozygous APOE2 or homozygous APOE4 mice prior to the study, and the resulting heterozygous ...

Conservation, Comparative Genomics And Species Delimitation Of The Reindeer Lichens (Cladonia), Jordan R. Hoffman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The genus Cladonia represents one of the most speciose genera of lichenized fungi, with more than 500 known species encompassing a diverse array of morphologies and habits. These lichens form keystone species in many habitats, serving a variety of ecological roles. However, despite being among of the more well studied lichens, there is much still unknown or under-studied about them. As is the case with most lichen study systems, phylogenetic study has been limited to a small number of partial loci, while adoption of next-generation sequence methods has been slow. As a consequence, there are still knowledge gaps in Cladonia ...

The Genetics Of Pain: An Exploration Of Gene-By-Environment Interactions And Their Effects On Pain, Mohamad F. Fakhereddin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The findings presented in this dissertation are part of the bigger SYMBIOME project which aims to use the biopsychosocial model of pain to develop a prognostic clinical phenotype for people that experience musculoskeletal (MSK) trauma. Chapter 2 presents an exploratory analysis to assess the relationships between genetic polymorphisms and pain severity and interference. Early childhood trauma was also explored as a moderator between genetic polymorphisms and pain outcomes. For pain severity, major allele carriers (A/A and G/A) of FKBP5 rs9394314 reported significantly higher scores than minor allele carriers (G/G). Further, major allele carriers who had at least ...