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The Molecular Determinants of Cranial Skeletal Development and Evolution
(2015-10-01)
The vertebrate head and face, one of the defining features of vertebrates, is an evolutionary novelty that enabled the major radiation of Vertebrata. The emergence of the multipotent neural crest cells, often mentioned as ...
Transcriptional Control of Maternal-Fetal Immune Tolerance
(2016-05-18)
Human leukocyte antigens (HLA) are important determinants of self-nonself immune recognition. HLA-G, uniquely expressed in the placenta, is believed to be key to fetus-induced immune tolerance during pregnancy. The ...
The Discovery and Characterization of the lncRNA Firre
(2015-05-08)
RNAs, including long noncoding RNAs (lncRNA), are known to be abundant and important structural components of the nuclear infrastructure. Yet, the identities, functional roles, and localization dynamics of lncRNAs that ...
A Field Guide to The Limb Progenitor
(2016-05-16)
The primary goal of this thesis was to characterize the embryonic limb progenitor, a cell type that populates the early limb bud during the onset of limb morphogenesis. Two features of the limb progenitor were explored 1) ...
Improving Stem Cell-Based Therapy and Developing a Novel Gene Therapy Approach for Treating Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD)
(2016-01-26)
Genetic mutations in muscle structural genes can compromise myofiber integrity, causing repeated muscle damage that ultimately exhausts muscle regenerative capacity and results in devastating degenerative conditions such ...
Fluorescence Imaging of Virus-Host Cell Interaction and Super-Resolution Imaging of Neuronal Cytoskeleton
(2015-11-10)
To study biological molecules, pathways and processes, fluorescence microscope has become an indispensable tool in modern biology. The major advantages of using fluorescence microscope include its ability to achieve ...
Discovery of Small-Molecule Autophagy Modulators in Mammalian Systems
(2016-06-07)
Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved catabolic process in eukaryotes, which involves the formation of double-membrane vesicles that enclose cellular components and fuse with lysosomes. Autophagy is critical to the ...
SIRT3 Suppresses Rewiring of Glutamine Metabolism in Cancer
(2016-08-31)
In the process of transformation, a cancer cell selects for a strategy to enhance its survival, growth, and proliferation. Metabolic rewiring is a hallmark of cancer cells and is at the heart of such a mechanism. Although ...
Investigation of the Mechanism That Powers DNA Translocation During Bacterial Natural Transformation
(2016-07-26)
If deoxyribonucleic acids are the building blocks of life, perhaps the proteins that move, shape, and assemble nucleic acids should be called architects. These proteins come in every size and shape and have vastly different ...
Investigation of the Gene Expression Dynamics of Early Mammalian Germ Layer Differentiation
(2017-11-02)
The mechanisms regulating the timing of developmental processes are poorly understood. To systematically investigate the timing of development and its underlying mechanisms, the dynamics of development must first be ...