Background: Helicobacter pylori (Hp) establishes life-long gastric infection in billions of humans, and is often responsible for diseases such as peptic ulcer and gastric cancer. Cumulative actions of genetic drift and natural selection over...
Few previous studies have compared microbial communities in subterranean and surface environments. Chemical analyses used to characterize the surface and cave microbial environments indicated limited exchange between surface and subsurface waters....
For more than a hundred million years, male plethodontid salamanders have
utilized non-volatile, proteinaceous courtship pheromones to regulate female mating
receptivity and promote mating success. These pheromones - which are delivered...
This thesis begins by reviewing human N-acetyltransferases (Chapter I), then outlines experiments involving human hepatocytes and rat N-acetyltransferases (Chapters II-V). These experiments facilitated the development of a dissertation project...
The current status of our knowledge of synaptic plasticity comes largely from studies of the hippocampus and the context of learning and memory. We remain largely ignorant of plasticity in other neural systems and contexts. The molecular basis of...
The mechanisms by which estrogens regulate mitochondrial activity are not completely understood. Chronic treatment of ovariectomized rats with estradiol (E 2 ) increased the amount of Nuclear Respiratory Factor-1 (NRF-1) protein in cerebral blood...
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic autoimmune disorder that is subdivided into Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC), and indeterminate colitis (IC). Epidemiological studies have proven that genetic variation increases...
Prostate--Cancer--Diagnosis; Chemical detectors; Biosensors
Prostate cancer is the most common type diagnosed among men in the United States.
Random oligodeoxynucleotide (ODN) libraries are used to generate DNA aptamers by
systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment (SELEX). We explored...
Chlamydia trachomatis is an obligate intracellular pathogen that utilizes a type III secretion system to enter mammalian cells and establish an intracellular niche. TARP, the translocated actin recruitment protein, is a chlamydial invasion protein...
Background: When rat salivary gland cells are cultured in vitro, they dedifferentiate within 24 h. Hypothesis: Growth factors will prevent de-differentiation of primary cultures of parotid gland cells, and they will induce differentiation of ParC5...
Quorum sensing (Microbiology); Cellular signal transduction; Bacterial genetics
Quorum sensing in the oral pathogen Aggregatibacter actinomycetemcomitans is dependent upon the soluble signaling molecule AI-2, but it is not known how the initial detection of AI-2 is coupled to the downstream regulation of gene expression that...
Recent advances in understanding the molecular mechanisms of mutagenesis indicate that most mutations are dependent on the activity of translesion synthesis DNA polymerases. The impact of reducing the level of these polymerases on mutagenesis and...
Spinal cord injury (SCI) can be divided into two distinct stages, an initial mechanical impact and a later "secondary injury" resulting from a cascade of cytokines triggering a spreading demyelination and apoptosis of neurons and glia...
Mucin 1 (MUC1) is a plasma membrane-bound glycoprotein that plays a protective role in corneal epithelial cells. Two full-length splice variants of MUCl: MUCl/B and MUCl/A, that differ by the inclusion of 27 bp from intron 1 and a SNP in MUCl/A,...
Oxygen is critical to aerobic metabolism, but hyperoxia is cytostatic and cytocidal. The precise mechanisms involved in hyperoxic cell injury remain incompletely understood although there is substantial support for the possibility that hyperoxia...
Pancreatic beta cells are extremely vulnerable to destruction by Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS). In type 1 diabetes and islet transplantation ROS are thought to be involved in the loss of beta cells. To test the role of antioxidant in islet...
The lipid aldehydes, 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (4-HNE) and propene-2-al (acrolein) are reactive α,β-unsaturated aldehydes generated during the peroxidation of lipids and are implicated in the pathogenesis of several oxidative-stress mediated diseases,...
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent environmental pollutants which
are detectable in the serum of all American adults. Amongst PCB congeners,
PCB 153 has the highest serum level. PCBs have been dose-dependently
associated with suspected...
Oxidative stress-induced immunosuppression could be due to a decrease in CD4 + T lymphocyte activation or proliferation. 4-Hydroxynonenal (HNE), an end product of lipid peroxidation, and its protein adducts act as markers of oxidative stress. In...
Pituitary tumor transforming gene ( PTTG ), also known as securing, is a novel oncogene that is expressed at high levels in most of the tumors analyzed to date. Overexpression of PTTG in mouse fibroblast(NIH 3T3) cells increases cell proliferation,...
