Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by FAS Department "Biology, Molecular and Cellular"
Now showing items 21-40 of 112
-
Efficient RNA Interference in C. Elegans Requires the Putative RNA Helicase RDE-12 and Early Exposure to Double-Stranded RNA
(2017-05-11)RNA interference (RNAi) is a phenomenon in which double stranded RNA (dsRNA) triggers silencing of cognate genes. In the nematode C. elegans, RNAi involves an amplifications step in which abundant secondary short-interfering ... -
Elucidating the Roles of Metabolic and Pigment-Modulating Factors in Melanoma
(2019-05-18)Metastatic melanoma is a deadly form of skin cancer that arises from the malignant transformation of melanocytes, the pigment-producing cells of the skin. Genetic and environmental factors both play a role in susceptibility ... -
Engineering High-Precision CRISPR-Cas9 Nuclease and Base Editor Technologies
(2018-05-16)The human genome, comprising approximately three billion nucleotides separated across 23 chromosomes, contains a vast amount of sequence space encoding instructions for the production of RNA and protein molecules that make ... -
Epigenetic Mechanisms in Development and Disease
(2019-05-14)This thesis presents three ongoing research projects that each attempt to understand the earliest stages of ontogeny, the assembly of a complex multicellular organism from a single totipotent cell, and how cellular diversity ... -
Establishment and Control of Behavioral Bias in Drosophila Melanogaster
(2018-05-13)Typically, variability observed across populations of animals is considered to be experimental noise. However, it is clear that individuals display considerable idiosyncrasies in behavior that are stable over both short ... -
Evolution of Substrate Selectivity in ATP Binding Cassette Exporters
(2019-09-10)ATP binding cassette proteins represent the largest super-family of primary transporters with homologous sequences present in all extant organisms, coordinating the hydrolysis of ATP in nucleotide binding domains (NBDs) ... -
Evolutionary Repair: Changes in the Genome Allow Meiotic Cohesin to Support Mitosis
(2019-09-12)Proteins in the same protein family share conserved domains but often perform distinct cellular functions. It remains unclear to what extent the specialized function of a protein is determined by changes in its intrinsic ... -
Evolving Models of Ovarian Cancer: Defining the Role of PAX8 in Fallopian Tube Tumorigenesis
(2015-08-07)Ovarian cancer is the most deadly gynecological malignancy in the US. Once thought to be a single disease arising from the ovarian surface epithelium, we now understand that it is in fact a heterogenous disease with origins ... -
Experimental Evolution of Cellular Response Networks in Yeast
(2017-05-10)Organisms respond to environmental changes using complex signaling networks, whose evolution has been studied by comparing their structure and function in related organisms. We complemented this approach by using experimental ... -
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) ... -
Flagellar Biosynthesis in E.coli Is Regulated by a Cascade of Stochastic Pulses
(2017-01-20)Genetically identical populations of bacteria can exhibit significant phenotypic heterogeneity even in the absence of environmental variations. In bacteria such as Bacillus and Salmonella, flagellar motility has been found ... -
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 ... -
Functional Mechanisms of Patched1, the Hedgehog Pathway Receptor
(2019-05-13)The Hedgehog signaling pathway is a fundamental signaling pathway in metazoans that governs the development, growth, and maintenance of numerous tissues throughout a metazoan organism’s life cycle. How Hedgehog signaling ... -
Genetic Basis of Natural Variation in Cellular Decision Making in Wild Yeasts
(2018-05-15)In nature, microbes often need to decide which of many potential nutrients to consume. This decision-making process is complex, involving both intracellular constraints and the organism’s perception of the environment. ... -
Genetic Regulation of Germ Layer Formation in Vertebrate Development
(2017-09-08)Early embryogenesis is a profoundly important time during which morphological rearrangements pattern the growing embryo. Research throughout animals has demonstrated that both the morphological changes and the underlying ... -
Genetics and Regulation of Bacterial Biofilms
(2015-03-24)Bacterial biofilm formation, the construction of dense, protective, multicellular communities, is a widely conserved behavior. In some bacteria, such as the Gram-positive model organism Bacillus subtilis, the genetics ... -
Genomes of Small RNA Viruses: Amendments, Discoveries, and Characterizations
(2018-05-10)RNA viruses make up a disproportionate amount of emerging human diseases, largely contribute to agriculture, and are recognized for their important roles in shaping the evolution of life. Metagenomics datasets have emphasized ... -
Genomic Imprinting in the Brain: the persistent influences from Mom and Dad
(2015-05-20)Most mammalian genes are equally expressed from the two inherited parental alleles. However, a puzzling subgroup known as imprinted genes are preferentially expressed from either the maternally- or paternally-inherited ... -
Glucokinase Polymerization Regulates Enzyme Activity in Response to Environmental Shifts
(2019-05-21)Unlike cells in a multicellular organism, free living microbes are subject to abrupt changes in environment that can come with no warning. Cells must be prepared to react to these changes on timescales too short for them ... -
High-Throughput Approaches to Profiling Antibody and T Cell Targets
(2019-09-12)B and T lymphocytes are potent effector cells of the adaptive immune system that recognize antigens through antibodies and T cell receptors (TCRs) respectively. Together, they orchestrate antigen-specific responses and ...