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Now showing items 131-140 of 140
Statistics and dynamics of adaptation from de novo mutations
(2017-03-03)
All living organisms are shaped by natural selection. Therefore, by studying natural selection as a generic process, we may gain insights into broad questions regarding the diversity of life, the fit of organisms to their ...
Investigating the Role of Heterogeneity in Breast Cancer and Experimental Design
(2018-08-31)
Breast cancer is predicted to be the most frequent newly diagnosed cancer and second leading cause of cancer-associated death among women in the United States in 2018. Intratumoral heterogeneity plays an important role in ...
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 ...
Causality in Epigenetics: Strategies for Targeted Epigenome Engineering of Transcriptional Regulation and Genome Topology
(2018-05-14)
Changes in epigenetic states are at the heart of normal developmental processes and also underlie many human diseases. Studies to date have established strong associations between histone post-translational modifications, ...
Causes and consequences of coexistence in the Vachellia drepanolobium ant-plant mutualism
(2017-05-10)
This thesis focuses on a mutualism between the East African acacia tree Vachellia drepanolobium and the species of canopy-dwelling ants that inhabit it. The tree provides the ants with nesting space in the canopy and ...
Uncovering Genes Underlying Quantitative Trait Variation Using S. cerevisiae as a Model System
(2017-05-09)
Individuals from the same species often differ quantitatively in many phenotypes. Understanding the genetic causes of such individuality may improve our understanding of the corresponding phenotypes, and our ability to ...
Programming molecular behavior: development and applications of autonomous DNA synthesis cascades
(2018-09-25)
DNA serves many functional roles in living organisms, and dynamic DNA nanotechnology seeks to expand this set of DNA-based behaviors through the rational design of new functions. In the past 20 years, the predictable and ...
Single-Molecule Studies of Bacterial Chromosome Organization and Segregation
(2017-01-04)
The bacterial chromosome is dramatically compacted into a subcellular structure called nucleoid. Simultaneously, it must be organized to allow the protein machinery for essential cellular processes to gain access to the ...
Charting Evolutionary Paths of Least Resistance
(2017-04-12)
The efficacy of therapeutics such as antibiotics and cancer immunotherapy is double-edged: as they eradicate agents of disease, they simultaneously select for resistant populations, eventually causing their own obsolescence. ...
Developing Computational Methods for Analyzing Metabolomics Data and Applications to Study Obesity
(2018-05-08)
Metabolomics is a powerful approach for discovering biomarkers and for characterizing the biochemical consequences of genetic variation. This dissertation consists of several projects that focused on developing computational ...