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.
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.
Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) offer an adaptive immune system that protects bacteria and archaea from nucleic acid invaders through an RNA-mediated nucleic acid cleavage mechanism. Our knowledge of...
Unraveling the detailed molecular mechanisms involved in muscle contraction is a prerequisite for understanding the molecular basis of muscular disorders. Since myosin is the motor of the muscle contractile system and troponin plays a...
Changes in environmental conditions cause alterations in the metabolism of cells. The field of metabolomics seeks to assay for and understand on a whole-cell level how metabolism responds to these changes. In this dissertation, a method...
Allergies are a growing problem in industrialized countries, with food allergies affecting 6% of children and 3-4% of adults. Tree nuts are a common cause of food-induced allergy and include walnut, cashew, almond, hazelnut, pistachio, ...
Over half of the proteins found in nature are anticipated to be glycosylated, yet less than 2% of the protein structures in the protein data bank are glycoproteins. Clearly, we are behind in our structural understanding of glycoproteins....
ORF45 of Kaposi's sarcoma–associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is a gamma herpesvirus-specific, immediate-early, and tegument protein. Our previous studies have revealed its crucial roles in both early and late stages of KSHV infection. In this...
Muscle generates force through the interaction between myosin cross-bridges and actin filaments. This study is part of a research project that aims to understand the molecular mechanism of force production through direct visualization of...
D4Z4 is a subtelomeric macrosatellite repeat on chromosome 4q that codes for DUX4, a gene that is causal to the muscle wasting disease Facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD). DUX4 expression is influenced by a number of genetic...
Olfactory perception affects the food choice of most living species. A strong set of data have been accumulated to demonstrate that the olfactory bulb, the first relay of olfactory information, as a metabolic sensor. Mitral cells of the...
The pituitary gland hormone prolactin (PRL) regulates diverse physiological functions in the female mammal. PRL is secreted into peripheral circulation by lactotrophs in the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland. The primary physiological...
One of the events leading to a cell's commitment to a new cell cycle resulting in cell division is upregulation of the replication-dependent histone gene family. Our laboratory has previously identified a coding region activating...
Reversible phosphorylation plays an integral role in the regulation of eukaryotic cellular proteins, especially transcription factors. YY1 is a multifunctional transcription factor involved in the regulation of a wide spectrum of...
Creatine kinase (CK) is one of the eight members of the family of phosphagen kinases, enzymes that play an important role in energy metabolism of cells displaying high and variable rates of ATP turnover such as muscle fibers, ...
Humans are largely dependent upon cone-mediated vision. However, death or dysfunction of rods, the predominant photoreceptor subtype, results in secondary loss of cones, remodeling of retinal circuitry, and blindness. The changes in...
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) has emerged as a major cause of human liver disease, with ~3% of the world population persistently infected with and more than one million new cases of infection reported annually. In most cases, HCV escapes the...
Cyclophilin A (CyPA) and its peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase (PPIase) activity plays an essential role in hepatitis C virus (HCV) replication. Mounting evidence indicate nonstructural protein 5A (NS5A) of HCV as the major target of...
Cells sense and respond to topographical cues in their microenvironment that influence growth, development, and migration. Cell migration and outgrowth assays have been used to study cellular movement or changes in cellular morphology...
Recent years have seen a dramatic worldwide increase in allergies and asthma that can now be described as reaching epidemic proportions. Food allergies affect approximately 2% of the adult population and up to 6% of the pediatric...
Tree nuts are a widely consumed food and include walnut, cashew, almond, hazelnut, pistachio, pecan, chestnut, macadamia, and Brazil nut. Although enjoyed safely by most individuals, allergic reactions are common and ~0.6% of the US...
The trafficking of proteins between intracellular compartments must be tightly regulated in order to maintain cellular balance. Early secretion form the endoplasmic reticulum is mediated by a complex of five coat proteins forming the...
The M2 proton channel from Influenza A is an established drug target, with multiple functions during the viral lifecycle. Amino acid mutations, in the residues lining the channel pore, have rendered M2 resistant to previously licensed...
Identification and Characterization of Select Allergens in Pecan [Carya Illinoinensis (Wangenh.) K. Koch] and Brazil Nut (Bertholletia Excelsa L.) Seeds
Tree nut allergies affect up to 0.2% young children and 0.5% adults in the US. The current investigation focused on two tree nuts (pecan and Brazil nut), with four specific aims: (i) to clone and characterize 2S albumin, a major allergen...
Muscle plays a primary role in movement of the body of multicellular organs. A study of muscle contraction at a molecular level will provide understanding of muscular malfunction, as well as insights into the basic mechanism of...
Designing an implantable construct requires the simulation of microenvironmental cues that drive cellular response in vivo. Guided bone regeneration (GBR) is a technique that utilizes a physical barrier membrane to facilitate healing of...
During the past 30 years, there have been several Flaviviridae threats. Among them, Hepatatis C virus (HCV) emerged in the Western hemisphere as the previously unidentified etiological agent of non-A non-B hepatitis in transfusion...
Interferon (IFN)-mediated innate immune response is the first line of defense against viral infections. And interferon regulatory factor 7 (IRF7) is a potent transcription factor of type I IFNs and IFN stimulated genes (ISGs) and is...
The current treatment for hepatitis C virus (HCV) consists of a combination therapy of alpha interferon (IFN-alpha) and ribivirin (RBV). Due to IFN resistance and side effects, new classes of drugs are needed to combat HCV infection....
Screening for effects of small molecules on cells grown in culture is a well-established method for drug discovery and testing, and faster throughput at lower cost is needed especially for lipophilic materials. Small-molecule arrays...
Insect flight muscle (IFM) is the preferred model system for visualizing actin-myosin interactions due to its highly ordered lattice of actin and myosin filaments. Electron tomography (ET) of fast-frozen, actively contracting Lethocerus...
Generation and Characterization of Fret Constructs of Cardiac Troponin C to Study Divalent Cation-Dependent Structural Changes and Develop a Ca2+ Sensor
Troponin C (TnC), the Ca2+ binding subunit in striated muscle, is central to regulation of contraction. Binding of Ca2+ to TnC results in a series of conformational changes in the different regulatory proteins, which ultimately leads to...
The cardiac thin filament is a highly ordered regulatory system for cardiac contraction. Regulatory proteins, a-tropomyosin (a-Tm) and troponin (cTn, composed of cTnT, cTnI, and cTnC), provide a Ca2+-dependent mechanism for controlling...
Familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (FHC) is the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in both preadolescents and adolescents. The hallmark of the disorder is myocardial hypertrophy of the left ventricle, which results in an obstruction...
Cell adhesion assemblies occur at sites where cells either contact each other or components related to the extracellular matrix. They provide the structural integrity needed to support nonmigrating cells via a host of transmembraneous...
The amoeboid sperm of Ascaris crawl through a cycle of protrusion, adhesion, and retraction, similar to that seen in conventional actin-based cells. However, instead of actin, these cells power their movement through modulation of the...
Myosin V, as a member of the myosin family, can "walk" along F-actin to transport many "cargos", such as mRNA and secretary vesicles, to its destination. This study is part of a research project that aims to understand the interaction...
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.
