Browsing FAS Theses and Dissertations by FAS Department "Biology, Molecular and Cellular"
Now showing items 1-20 of 66
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A Clock-Phased Sigma Factor Cascade Is Required for Global Circadian Transcriptional Rhythms in Cyanobacteria
(2017-09-07)The circadian clock of the cyanobacterium Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 drives oscillations in global mRNA transcript abundances with 24 h periodicity under continuous light conditions. The transcription factor RpaA ... -
Activity Dependent Regulation of Inhibitory Circuitry
(2015-10-02)Inhibition controls information flow through a neural circuit by modulating synaptic integration, restricting action potentials, and coordinating the activity of ensembles of neurons. These functions are mediated by a ... -
Balancing transcriptional activity in Drosophila through protein-protein interactions on chromatin
(2016-05-09)Chromatin plays a vital role in the implementation of gene expression programs. Several disparate groups of regulatory proteins alter chromatin state through post-translational modification of histone proteins, nucleosome ... -
Biochemical Studies of TRP Channel Activation and Modulation
(2016-10-19)TRP channels are the cellular sensors behind many elements of somatosensation, including temperature sensing and the perception of pain. In fact, two channels, TRPV1 and TRPA1, expressed in pain-sensing nociceptor neurons, ... -
Circadian Clocks in the Real World: Effects of Dynamic Light Regimes on the Regulation of Circadian Gene Expression in Cyanobacteria
(2017-09-13)Organisms use internal oscillators to control their physiology in conjunction with the predictable environmental changes of the day/night cycle. However, it is not always clear how internal timing information is used by ... -
Classical Conditioning Alters Short Noncoding RNA Expression in Drosophila
(2015-05-14)MicroRNAs (miRNAs) and other classes of short non-coding RNAs regulate essential processes in the development and function of the nervous system. Regulation of miRNAs by neural activity has also been reported. Recently, ... -
Convergent Excitatory Pathways Mediate the Zebrafish Escape Behavior
(2015-05-14)Scientists have long been fascinated by how anatomical structures in the brain can generate the diversity of behaviors apparent in the animal kingdom. While the ultimate goal of neuroscience is to understand complex brain ... -
Decomposition of Olfactory Memory by Dopamine Neural Cirucit in Drosophila
(2017-05-12)During the formation of an olfactory memory in Drosophila, the Mushroom Body (MB) receives olfactory cues (Conditioned Stimuli, CS) relayed from the antennal lobe and aversive or reward stimuli (Unconditioned Stimuli; US) ... -
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 ... -
Discovery and In Vivo Characterization of Long Noncoding RNAs
(2016-05-17)The noncoding genome, or the portion of the genome that does not encode for proteins, encompasses >95% of the human genome. It has been found that the majority of disease-associated genetic variants identified by genome-wide ... -
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 ... -
Dissection of Complex Behavior and Whole-Brain Functional Mapping in Larval Zebrafish
(2016-09-12)Understanding how the brain transforms sensory input into complex behavior is a fundamental question in systems neuroscience. Using larval zebrafish, we study the temporal component of phototaxis, ... -
Dynamics of Neural Activity During Chemotaxis in Caenorhabditis Elegans
(2015-09-28)The nervous system of an animal must control and coordinate locomotion in a changing and often unpredictable environment in order to survive. When a Caenorhabditis elegans navigates its environment, the nervous system can ... -
Dysregulation of Host Cellular microRNA Expression by the Human Papillomavirus E6 and E7 Oncoproteins
(2017-05-12)Human papillomaviruses (HPVs) are small DNA viruses with a tropism for squamous epithelia. Nearly all cervical cancers are caused by a small group of high-risk HPVs and these viruses are also associated with anal, vaginal, ... -
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 ... -
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 ... -
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 ... -
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) ...