Tidal wetland channels provide rearing habitat for juvenile Chinook salmon as they emigrate from freshwater habitat and prepare to enter the ocean. Widespread diking and drainage of estuarine marshes for agricultural and urban development may have contributed to a decline in salmon abundance in the Pacific Northwest, prompting efforts to...
X-ray computed tomography is a noninvasive imaging modality capable of reconstructing exact density values of 3D objects. Computed tomography machines are deployed across the world to provide doctors with an image that reveals more detail than a standard x-ray image. We investigate algorithms based on exact computed tomography reconstruction formulas...
Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) is a leading cause of bronchopneumonia in infants and elderly. Knowledge of viral and host protein interactions is important for better understanding of the viral pathogenesis and may lead to development of novel therapeutic drugs. Here, we show that RSV Matrix (M) protein interacts with cellular...
Soil respiration, or the combined CO₂ emissions from roots and soil microorganisms, constitutes one of the largest losses of carbon (C) from terrestrial ecosystems. The major drivers of soil respiration, which include soil moisture, temperature, and substrate quality, have been known for some time. Nevertheless,
correlations between these drivers and...
Anecdotal evidence suggests many Pacific Northwest estuaries are filling with sediment due to historical logging activities in upstream watersheds. Using the Siletz River estuary as a case study, this research began by analyzing timber harvest and discharge records of the Siletz River watershed, and found that increased timber harvest coincides...
Mycobacterium avium cause disseminated disease in immunocompromised people such as AIDS patients. Subsequent to crossing the intestinal epithelium, M. avium thrive within vacuoles in macrophages. The bacteria exhibit a different, more invasive, phenotype after being in macrophages compared to M. avium from laboratory conditions. We hypothesized that this intracellular phenotype...
In this dissertation I study evolutionary patterns at genes encoding antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) in frogs. AMPs are short, amphipathic, cationic, secreted proteins that kill bacteria and other pathogens through a non-catalytic mechanism that involves
binding to and disrupting the microbial cell membrane. In many animal taxa, positive selection is much...