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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.
Integrin signaling is critical for many biological functions including cell survival, cell migration, development, immunity and wound healing. Integrins perform their function through a structural change that is propagated from the...
This dissertation attempts to provide insight into the mixing, hydration and annealing of self-assembled, multilayered films based on precise counting of their doping ions and water content. Several practical applications are then...
In order to increase our understanding of the relationship between domains we must move beyond traditional phylogenetic approaches and attempt to group species and domains in new and different ways. This paper is an analysis of various...
Large-volume protein crystals are a prerequisite for neutron diffraction studies and their production represents a bottleneck in obtaining neutron structures. Many protein crystals that permit the collection of high-resolution X-ray...
Small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) are localized in the nucleolus as small ribonucleoprotein particle (snoRNP) that are RNA-protein complexes and catalyze site specific modifications on the ribosomal RNA. When compared to many protein...
Diphtheria toxin repressor is a regulatory protein from Corynebacterium diphtheriae, the causal agent of Diphtheria. The diphtheria toxin repressor (DtxR) contains an SH3-like domain that forms an intramolecular complex with a proline...
Muscle contraction is regulated at the thin filament level by tropomyosin (Tm) and the troponin complex (Tn). Tm is an α-helical coiled coil protein that forms a continuous strand on the actin filament through end-end interactions with...
Eukaryotic genomes replicate via the synchronous firing of clusters of origins that together produce multi-replicon domains, each of which replicates at a defined time during S-phase. This temporal program is termed the DNA replication...
Tissue engineering is one of the fastest growing biotechnology industries. The overarching research goals of the tissue engineering industry are highly intertwined with the field of medicine. The tissue engineering field seeks to create...
All functional RNAs contain post-transcriptionally modified nucleotides. 2'-O-ribose methylation and pseudouridylation are the two major types of modifications, which occur by box C/D and box H/ACA ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complexes, ...
Eukaryotic genomes are organized into the nucleoprotein complex, chromatin. The fundamental subunit of chromatin is the nucleosome: 150 base pairs (bps) of DNA wrapped around a "spool" of histone proteins. Chromatin structure depends...
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...
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...
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...
This dissertation presents studies by magnetization, dc magnetic susceptibility and EPR spectroscopy on several new spin-frustrated polyoxometalate (POM) lattices of increasing spin sizes and complexities. Measurements have been made...
One of the primary contributors to protein structure and functioning in biological systems is the electrostatic environment experienced by the protein. This environment is caused by charged and polar chemical interactions, with the...
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease currently affecting about five million Americans. The devastating impact of Alzheimer's disease and the growing cost of the disease make it an emerging public health problem causing...
Zika virus (ZIKV) is a re-emerging mosquito-borne flavivirus of significant public health concern closely related to other highly pathogenic flaviviruses, such as dengue virus (DENV) and West Nile virus (WNV). With the rise of ZIKV in...
Small helical membrane proteins are functionally very important. They are involved in many cellular transport and signal transduction pathways maintaining the chemical, mechanical and electrical potentials of cells. They constitute...
The scope of this dissertation is two-fold: assembly of histidine-tagged peptides and proteins directly to the surface of a 1.5 nm AuNP and the assembly and delivery of nano-medical materials for MR imaging and gene therapy. Chapter 1 is...
Plants are often subjected to extreme environmental conditions and must adapt rapidly. The phytohormone abscisic acid (ABA) accumulates under abiotic stress conditions, signaling transcriptional changes that trigger physiological...
Myosin activity and actomyosin interaction play key roles in normal and pathological cardiac muscle contraction. Factors that modulate actomyosin have the potential to exert changes in cardiac contraction that may be necessary for normal...
Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), a family of enzymes known for their proteolytic activities on processing extracellular matrix substrates, may play an integral role in blood-brain barrier opening following an ischemic stroke. Several...
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....
Hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) regulates an array of physiological functions and acts as a second messenger at low levels. However, the elevation of these levels can lead to oxidative stress, a state that is implicated in the progression of...
Determining the Solution Conformational Entropy of Oligosaccharides: Isolating the Effects of Anomeric Configuration, Glycosidic Linkage, Degree of Polymerization, Linearity versus Cyclicity and Hydrogen Bonding
Oligosaccharides have various fundamental roles, ranging from providing nutritional and flavoring support to being involved in fertilization and parasite infection processes. Maltooligosaccharides are used heavily in the food and...
Interactions between charged residues are known to have significant effects on protein folding stability and binding properties. The contributions of different types of non-covalent interactions are altered by mutating one or more...
Many proteins in the nucleus are involved in the regulation of DNA-templated events. Numerous studies have linked changes in the chromatin structure and the transcriptional program of a cell in response to a stimulus or during...
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...
DNA replication in all Eukaryotes follows a defined temporal order termed replication-timing program (RT), which is coupled with the spatial separation of chromatin distribution inside the nucleus. Early or late replicating chromatin...
Human mesenchymal stem cells are a class of adult multipotent cells that are of interest to researchers for their clinical potential. While this cell type has been intensely investigated, there is still a significant amount to be learned...
The structure of human acidic fibroblast growth factor (FGF-1) is classified a b-trefoil structure, one of the fundamental protein superfolds. The x-ray crystal structures of wild type and various mutants of FGF-1 have been solved in...
The naturally occurring enediynes are compounds with astonishingly high biological activity, based upon their ability to generate DNA-damaging reactive species. In an effort to find a photochemical way for enediyne activation, the...
BACKGROUND: Kallikrein 6 (KLK6) is a newly identified member of the kallikrein family of secreted serine proteases that prior studies indicate is elevated at sites of central nervous system (CNS) inflammation and which shows regulated...
Kaposi's Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus (KSHV) is an oncogenic virus that has adapted unique mechanisms to modulate the cellular microenvironment of its human host. The pathogenesis of KSHV is intimately linked to its manipulation of...
The Morita-Baylis-Hillman reaction dates back to German and Japanese patents where both Morita, and Baylis and Hillman, discovered a new carbon-carbon bond forming reaction involving a nucleophilic catalyst, an activated alkene, and an...
The Michael addition of lithium enolates to α, β unsaturated esters is considered to be one of the powerful and widely used C-C bond forming methods in organic synthesis. We investigated the Michael addition of lithium propionate enolates...
The aggresome is a key cytoplasmic organelle for sequestration and clearance of toxic protein aggregates. When proteasome-dependent degradation fails, misfolded proteins can be sequestered into aggresomes, which facilitate their...
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...
Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) are a family of metzincin enzymes that act as the principle regulators and remodelers of the extracellular matrix (ECM). While MMPs are involved in many normal biological processes, unregulated MMP...
Petroleomics: Applications in the Fingerprinting of the Acidic and Basic Crude Oil Components Detected by Electrospray Ionization Fourier Transform Ion Cyclotron Resonance Mass Spectrometry
We have previously demonstrated the ability of electrospray ionization Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (ESI FT-ICR MS) to resolve and identify the polar species found in all petroleum distillates. The...
The DNA in the eukaryotic genome is wrapped in 147--bp segments around an octamer of histone proteins to form the fundamental subunit of chromatin, the nucleosome. Nucleosomes regulate the access of proteins to DNA, thus regulating...
An attempt has been made to improve a crystal contact of human acidic fibroblast growth factor (haFGF; 140 amino acids) to control the crystal growth, because haFGF crystallizes only as a thin-plate form, yielding crystals suitable for X...
Shifts in circadian rhythms, like in shift work or jet lag, have been shown to increase the risk of many metabolic disorders. Therefore, it is not surprising that many genes involved in the circadian clock mechanism have demonstrated a...
Part I: Isocratic and Gradient Elution Reversed-Phase Liquid Chromatography for the Estimation of the Hydrophobicity Parameter Log K'W: Applications to Newer Generation Stationary Phases. Part II: Planar Electrochromatographic Instrumental Design and Results
The first half of this dissertation (Chapters 1-3) will discuss reversed-phase liquid chromatographic (RPLC) estimations of hydrophobicity. The RPLC retention values in purely aqueous mobile phases are used as measures of hydrophobicity....
This dissertation presents the concept, development, and characterization of a new methodology for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of protein digests in solution. Two beam fluorescence cross correlation spectroscopy is used to...
The performance of a material is often dictated by surface and interfacial properties such as wettability, friction and adhesion. The ability to modify the wetting properties of surfaces by using self assembled polyelectrolyte...
This dissertation presents EPR spectroscopic, dc magnetic susceptibility, and thermo-magnetic studies of three spin S = 1 systems. This work is primarily focused on the complexes [(CH3CN)5VOV(CH3CN)][BF4]4, Cr(C4H13N3)((O2)2.H2O and Cr...
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.
