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Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Accumulating evidence suggests that schizophrenia is a disorder of the brain’s communication, a result of functional and structural dysconnectivities. Patients with schizophrenia exhibit irregular neuronal circuit and network activity, ...
Maintaining the balance of protein synthesis and degradation is essential for efficient proteostasis and organismal health. The 26S proteasome is a large, multisubunit proteolytic complex that functions as the primary mechanism for...
Self-sustaining oscillators regulate diverse aspects of physiology in mammals such as insulin secretion, cell cycle regulation, and circadian rhythmicity. The circadian clock is based upon several interacting feedback loops, which affect...
As medicine progresses and the population ages neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson's, Huntington's, and Alzheimer's disease, begin to become more and more prevalent. In order to treat these devastating disorders it is important...
BCL6, a protooncogene, is most commonly involved in diffuse large cell lymphomas (DLCL) which is the most common form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma. BCL6 recruits a number of transcriptional corepressors including BCL6 corepressor (BCoR) to...
Circadian rhythms in mammals are generated by a negative transcriptional feedback loop in which PERIOD (PER) is rate-limiting for feedback inhibition. Casein kinases Iδ and Iε (CKIδ/ε) can regulate temporal abundance/activity of PER by...
Depression, anxiety, and impairments in learning and memory are all associated with traumatic brain injury (TBI). While zinc deficiency has been correlated with depression, supplemental zinc appears to have antidepressant effects in both...
The process of normal wound repair after tissue injury follows a closely regulated sequence involving inflammation, the recruitment, activation and proliferation of fibroblasts and the secretion of extracellular matrix, which culminates...
Fibroblast growth factor-1 (FGF-1) is an angiogenic factor with therapeutic potential for the treatment of ischemic disease. FGF-1 has low intrinsic thermostability and is characteristically formulated with heparin as a stabilizing agent...
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is a chronic relapsing brain disease characterized by compulsive drinking despite negative consequences. While a majority of the world’s population consumes alcohol in a controlled manner, there is a subset of...
Yin Yang 1 (YY1) is a highly conserved, multifunctional zinc finger transcription factor. It has been shown to regulate genes involved in cell cycle regulation, apoptosis, cell growth and proliferation, differentiation, and development....
Stress is a ubiquitous aspect of everyday life. As such, there exists a great deal of variability in the individual response to stress, particularly as a functional cause of depression. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the...
Although zinc has been implicated in the functionality of the hippocampus since the 1970's, the recent discovery of adult neuronal stem cells in this region of the brain provides the potential for novel zinc-regulated hippocampal...
The functionality of a protein depends on its correct folding, but newly synthesized proteins are susceptible to aberrant folding. Misfolded proteins are aggregation prone and protein aggregation are associated with many human diseases, ...
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) gives rise to a progressive disease state that results in many adverse and long-term neurological consequences, including deficits in learning and memory, development of major depressive disorder, and...
In eukaryotes, each individual chromosome is one large DNA molecule packed by histone proteins into a compact nucleoprotein filament. Two molecules each of core histone proteins H2A, H2B, H3 and H4 assemble to form an octamer protein...
Specific mutations in the replacement histone variant H3.3 are known to drive cancers such as glioblastomas, chondroblastomas and large cell tumors of the bone primarily in children and young adults. Several recent studies have suggested...
As the global burden of depression continues to rise, development of more efficacious and faster-acting antidepressant treatments has remained stagnant over several decades. This has created a dire need for a newer generation of...
In the United States approximately 17, 000 new spinal cord injury cases occur annually. Even with timely medical interventions, the primary injury is often exacerbated by a period of inflammation and pathological vascular changes that...
In mammalian cells, cyclin dependent kinase (CDK) is subjected to negative regulation by a conserved kinase, Wee1. In budding yeast, S. cerevisiae, Swe1 kinase, the Wee1 homologue, phosphorylates and inactivates Cdk1 associated with...
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder and the most common form of dementia. Like many neurological disorders, Alzheimer’s disease has a sex-biased epidemiological profile, affecting approximately twice as many...
Our DNA is under continuous stress by endogenous and exogenous attacks such as genotoxic chemicals, ionizing radiation, and metabolic products. DNA damage is extremely detrimental, even a single unrepaired damage is sufficient to kill a...
My research is designed to test the hypothesis that a single nucleotide polymorphism (SNPs) in the non-coding region of the GCH1 gene suppresses GCH1 mRNA translation and generates a novel peptide, and that both of these phenomena...
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) embodies a spectrum of complex, pervasive, and heterogeneous neurodevelopmental disorders. There is not one single identified cause, but is instead composed of dynamically diverse etiologies and...
Liver fibrosis is the common end stage of all chronic liver diseases, such as chronic viral hepatitis, alcoholism, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, autoimmune hepatitis, alpha 1 anti-trypsin deficiency and some rare metabolic diseases....
Genetic animal models have become an increasingly useful tool in addressing pathophysiological changes in neuropsychiatric disorders at the molecular, synaptic and circuitry levels. Previous genetic and postmortem studies have identified...
Protein phosphorylation ' a reversible covalent process ' has evolved as one of the major posttranslational modifications that targets numerous transcription factors. Apoptosis (programmed cell death) is an irreversible intrinsic...
N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) are glutamate-gated ion channels that play key roles in excitatory synaptic transmission and are involved in numerous neurological disorders as well. The number of neuronal surface NMDARs are not...
Depression affects approximately 7% of adults in the US annually and is one of the most common mental disorders. One striking aspect of this disorder, is that it affects women at about twice the rate as compared to men. Furthermore, ...
Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) is the most common form of epilepsy in adults, and patients with TLE often suffer from seizures refractory to antiepileptic drugs. A deeper understanding of the pathophysiology of TLE is critical for...
Yin Yang 1 (YY1) is a multifunctional transcription factor that can activate or repress transcription depending on the promotor and/or the co-factors recruited. YY1 is phosphorylated in various signaling pathways and is critical for...
Depression is a devastating disease that is the leading cause of disability worldwide. One reason for its massive disease burden is that classical antidepressants require several weeks of administration to take effect, and they are only...
Fibrosis is characterized by excessive synthesis of type I collagen which impedes the normal function of an affected organ. Type I collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, produced by the folding of two a1(I) polypeptides...
Various natural environments have been examined for the presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria and/or novel resistance mechanisms, but little is known about resistance in the terrestrial deep subsurface. This study examined two deep...
In preclinical research, females are often excluded because of the presumed variability associated with the cyclic fluctuations of the estrous cycle and pregnancy. But how much variability in biological data actually occurs as a result...
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) include exosomes and microvesicles, and are important mediators of cell-to-cell communication in healthy and pathological environments. Packed with biological information and present in a variety of...
When cells encounter DNA replication stress, the S-phase checkpoint is activated to facilitate cell cycle arrest and DNA repair. An important aspect of the checkpoint is the transcriptional response, but the details governing this...
The key to species survival depends on the ability to reproduce. In mammals ovulation requires a precisely timed luteinizing hormone (LH)-surge on the afternoon of proestrus. It is thought that this LH-surge requires the convergence of...
The mechanisms underlying the gestational and circadian timing of parturition in humans are not fully understood. Studies of the timing of initiation of spontaneous labor show a peak between 2400 and 0500. This peak in labor onset...
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are a heterogeneous population of membrane-bound nanoparticles that are essential mediators of cell-to-cell communication. They package diverse cargo that includes proteins, lipids, RNA, and DNA. EVs are...
The Spindle Assembly Checkpoint (SAC) prevents anaphase onset in response to chromosome attachment defects. Bipolar kinetochore attachment is required for SAC silencing which allows for anaphase onset and the release of the phosphatase, ...
Cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy report changes in behavior commonly referred to as “chemo brain.” It is hypothesized that neuroinflammation contributes to the pathophysiology of “chemo-brain.” I examined the effects of naproxen, ...
Understanding the neural and genetic basis of complex behaviors is a major outstanding question in neurobiology. The fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, displays innate, complex reproductive behaviors. These behaviors are regulated by...
This dissertation focuses on microtubule assembly mechanisms and functions in dividing and non-dividing cells. In dividing cells, centrosome is the major microtubule-organizing center (MTOC). Ninein (Nin) is a centrosomal protein whose...
Cigarette smoking during pregnancy is a major public health concern, resulting in detrimental health effects in the mother and her offspring. The adverse behavioral consequences for children with developmental nicotine exposure include...
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane enclosed vesicles released from cells that act as mediators of intercellular communication and are involved in normal physiological processes as well as pathological conditions. EVs can transfer...
Possibly affecting at least 1.5 million Americans today, cardiomyopathy greatly contributes to the reign of heart disease as the number one killer in the United States. Consisting of four main disease manifestations (hypertrophic, ...
Cardiomyopathies are a heterogenous group of myocardial disorders that are frequently associated with a genetic etiology. The cardiac/slow skeletal troponin C gene (TNNC1) encodes a sarcomeric protein (TNNC1) that has a central role in...
Tight regulation of the cell cycle is essential to maintain genome integrity. Errors at any stage during cell cycle, including replication, chromosome segregation, and mitotic exit, can lead to genome instability, which has been shown to...
Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane-encapsulated structures released by cells which carry signaling factors, proteins and microRNAs that mediate intercellular communication. Accumulating evidence supports an important role of EVs...
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
