Gender-based violence (GBV) is a pervasive public health issue that continues to affect women globally. GBV is estimated to impact 37% of Botswanan women, exceeding the average global prevalence of 30%. This investigation takes place within the Botswana Global Health Initiative, a collaboration led by OSU researchers, the community of...
Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) neurons are able to trigger the release of luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone which control the maturation of oocytes and ovulation which is vital for reproduction. They are the most downstream neurons that project to the median eminence into the pituitary portal where they release GnRH. Modulation...
Paper-based microfluidic assays, like the common pregnancy test, allow for rapid screening at the point- of-care at low cost and with no instrumentation. Fabric has many similar properties to paper, but is more flexible and durable, making it a promising option for use in a variety of diagnostic and screening...
Genetic code expansion is a technology that allows for site-specific incorporation of noncanonical amino acids into recombinant proteins at amber stop codons using engineered translational machinery. The technology allows for expanded study into proteins, derived from the integration of novel chemical functions found in noncanonical amino acids, such as fluorescence,...
The scientific method applies hypothesis testing to material samples through experimentation, measurement, and data analysis, which produce representations—or features—that describe phenomena of interest. Biomolecular features come in numerous forms such as values, matrices, graphs, three-dimensional structures, trajectories, and molecular surfaces. Researchers have tested thousands of features related to protein molecules...
The nucleocapsid protein (N protein) of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 is known to play an essential part of the virus’ functions. The N protein can protect and package the large 29,903 nucleotide genomic RNA whilst also interacting with structural membrane protein M and the spike protein S....
BCL11B, also known as CTIP2, is a transcription factor which plays a critical role in the regulation and development of many tissues and organ systems, including the skin. A 2019 study by Goos et. al. uncovered a novel point mutation in BCL11B gene that converted the Arginine(R)-3 residue to a...
Histones, as part of nucleosomes, are responsible for DNA packaging in chromosomes. They also affect DNA expression by a multitude of post-translational modifications, especially prevalent on the amino terminus of histones. Co-activator protein complexes “write”, “read”, or “erase” histone modifications, and in balance determine which sections of DNA are free...
Over the past decade, it has come to light that many published scientific findings cannot be reproduced. This has led to the replication crisis in science. Many researchers feel that they can no longer trust much of what they read in scientific journals, and the public is becoming ever more...
The gut microbiome influences human disease including Type 2 diabetes, obesity and metabolic syndrome and interacts with the innate immune system. The human cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide (hCAMP), an important component of the innate immune system, and vitamin D and xanthohumol, a natural compound found in beer hops, regulate its expression....
There are clues that suggest human breast cancer cells use collagen fibers to migrate, and vinculin is a transmembrane protein associated with how cells attach to their environment. Therefore, immunostaining for the vinculin will shed some light in how human breast cancer cells are attaching to their environment. Immunostaining for...
Base-pairing interaction are the fundamental blocks of an RNA structure. With increased ability to determine the structure of RNA molecules, an accurate and informative way of classifying these interactions would help to study RNA structure at many levels. Apart from the well-known complementary base pairs and wobble pairs, other interactions...
Atopic Dermatitis (AD) is a widespread skin disorder, affecting some 20% of the world’s population. Though the precise molecular underpinnings are still being understood, changes in lipid composition within the epidermal stratum corneum (SC) layer have been shown to be closely linked with AD. Previous studies have identified several specific...
Since the 1960s, Vietnamese scholars have written autobiographical literature catered to the American public though they have not gotten as much recognition as soldier accounts and anti-war literature. These Vietnamese literatures shifted in scope and form with the succeeding waves of refugee resulted from the war in Việt Nam. As...
Koi herpesvirus (KHV), is a highly pathogenic virus causing high mortality in common carp and koi, especially in fry. One of the unique features of herpesvirus infections is their ability to become latent following initial infection. During latent infection, only viral genome persists in the host and remains dormant in...
Antisense morpholino oligomers are synthetic macromolecules can modify gene expression. While these compounds have great potential to treat a broad range of human diseases, they suffer from poor cellular delivery. Conjugating cell-penetrating peptides onto these morpholinos is one option of addressing delivery, however development remains slow due to the cost...
Osmotic stress is a common challenge faced by organisms in environments with variable salinity or aridity. Understanding the evolutionary mechanisms underlying adaptation to osmotic stress may have wide applications, including management of populations experiencing climate change, or engineering industrial organisms involved in processes such as fermentation. While Saccharomyces cerevisiae is...
A specific tyrosine post-translational modification, called 3-nitro-tyrosine (nitroTyr), has been known to be present on an essential calcium signaling protein called calmodulin (CaM) during oxidative stress. While protein-bound 3-nitro-tyrosine has long been considered a biomarker of OS, it is also hypothesized to be a mechanism for protein signaling. However, purification...
Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 (PRC2) is a histone methyltransferase that initiates facultative heterochromatin formation by trimethylating histone H3 on lysine 27 (H3K27me3). Mutations within its three primary subunits, KMT6, EED, and SUZ12, result in inherited diseases and sporadic cancers. In the fungus Fusarium graminearum, deletion of the gene encoding the...
Academic performance of student athletes is an of interest topic in the current climate of rising university athletics expenses. This project academic population of Oregon State University student athletes with that of the general undergraduate population using grade point averages (GPA). Samples were compared using team, gender, college, and sport...
Cyanobacteria represent an underexploited source of bioactive natural products of interest to the pharmaceutical industry. Lack of development of these compounds as drug leads is due mainly to myriad practical problems with the producing strains including long doubling times, genetic intractability, and low compound yields. Previous attempts at heterologous expression...
Background: Chronic heavy alcohol consumption is a risk factor for bone fracture.
Using a non-human primate model of voluntary alcohol self-administration, we have recently shown that alcohol consumption suppresses intracortical bone remodeling. The current study extends this investigation to asses the effect of alcohol consumption on cancellous bone mass, architecture,...
The purpose of this study was to examine pregnant Puerto Rican women’s perspectives on the Zika virus threat. Using data collected from open-ended, semi-structured interviews and observational field notes, we aimed to understand the degree to which Zika contributes to maternal stress. How concerned are pregnant women in Puerto Rico...
The purpose of this meta-synthesis was to investigate why students from the U.S. receive the scores they do on the international TIMSS and PISA science exams. This work sought to shed light on the perceived disparity between science performance of U.S. students and students from other countries. To do so,...
The role of the high density lipoprotein (HDL) molecule is currently an area of great interest within the scientific community. Previously, mouse and human studies have demonstrated an inverse association between HDL cholesterol (HDL-C) levels and cardiovascular disease. Recent clinical trials, which increased HDL-C, have failed to reduce the number...
The aging process is a biological phenomenon in mammals that heavily contributes to the onset of chronic diseases. While there are many theories that attempt to explain the biological onset of aging, one emerging theory involves chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation has been previously linked to several age-related diseases and is...
Heavy chronic alcohol consumption has been linked to a myriad of
detrimental skeletal effects. Many studies have been conducted to examine
the effects of alcohol abuse upon cancellous bone. However, little is known
about its effect upon cortical bone. The skeleton is comprised of
approximately 80% cortical bone and thus...
Many people die yearly worldwide due to diseases associated with aging, and if the
process of aging in humans was more understood, the health of these patients could be
improved. While many biochemical actions are involved with the aging process, loss of
proteostasis has been called one of the most...
In recent years, microRNA’s (miRNA’s) have emerged as important in regulating gene expression. Fluctuations in their levels are associated with the up or down-regulation of tumor-suppressor genes and oncogenes. Thus, the ability to visualize changes in miRNA is an important step in understanding cancer emergence and development. The Burrows group...
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a relatively rare neurodegenerative disorder that is fatal 2-4 years after the onset of the disease. Population studies are being done in order to help reveal candidates for further studies of disease etiology, disease progression, as well as to further understand racial and ethnic variations....
An ideal labeling reaction between protein and surface should generate a protein-patterned surface with control over the orientation of the desired protein. Controlling orientation would generate a homogeneous, un-fouled protein surface and allow for maximum efficiency in regards to the activity, reactivity, and stability of the protein. In this research...
Water samples along the Washington, Oregon and California coastline were collected using high resolution sampling and analyzed to determine particulate organic carbon and nitrogen concentrations. Over 28 days during August 2011, nearly 1500 samples were collected aboard the R/V Wecoma (W1108C) using a semi-automated filtration system. Additional subsurface samples were...
Autophagy, a homeostatic degradation pathway, has a role in promoting cell survival under stress conditions, but can also promote cell death under conditions of sustained stress. This project investigates the cytotoxic potential of coibamide A and other natural products in autophagy-deficient and wild-type mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs). Wild-type MEFs were...
Auxotrophic strains of the fungus Fusarium graminearum were generated in order to increase
the number of functional selectable markers and improve the utility of the model organism.
Single metabolic genes, the sequences encoding for enzymes required for the production of
specific essential metabolites, were deleted in F. graminearum, and then...
Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a gram-negative nosocomial pathogenic bacterium known for its resilience against antibiotics. The bacterium infects over 50,000 patients each year in the United States, with 13% of reported cases involving multi-drug-resistant strains of Pseudomonas. This research discovered several fungal natural products with promising activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The...
There is a rapid shift towards urbanization all over the world. In developing countries like Pakistan, the urbanization process is under-planned leading to the haphazard growth of existing cities without enough resources to fit the needs of the residents. Cities in Pakistan lack good transportation systems, which creates inaccessibility to...
Global warming and on-going depletion of fossil fuels have stimulated research to develop renewable sources of energy. Current renewable energy use comprises only 10% of the energy consumed in the US and is focused mostly on generating electricity. The majority of the energy consumed by the US transportation sector is...
Glioblastoma multiforme is a devastating primary brain tumor with a median five year survival rate of less than 5%. It is a cancer that is resistant to current cancer treatments, such as surgery and chemotherapy, as well as one that is prone to recurrence after surgical removal. This highlights the...
Exploring and quantifying the parameters regarding contact guidance may provide valuable insight to the precise mechanisms controlling cell movement, especially in a three-dimensional environment. The objective of this project was to quantify the relationship between MDA-MB-231 cell morphogenesis and the geometry of the cell’s local microenvironment, which was modeled by...
A study was conducted to evaluate the developmental toxicity of three commonly detected mycotoxins in food (deoxynivalenol, patulin, and zearalenone) using the zebrafish (Danio rerio) model. Mycotoxin exposures were carried out at five concentrations (0.0064, 0.064, 0.64, 6.4, and 64 μM). Morphological and photomotor screenings were conducted at 24 hours...
Fer1L6 is an uncharacterized member of the ferlin family of proteins, a group of large, calcium sensitive proteins with emerging roles in vesicle trafficking and various disease states. The presence of Fer1L6 has been identified within the C2C12 cell line of mouse skeletal muscle. To determine the protein’s subcellular location...
The preconditioning agent poly-ICLC has recently been shown to protect against cerebral injury in the mouse model, when administered systemically prior to ischemic insult. However, the mechanism by which poly-ICLC provides neuroprotection is currently unknown, but it has been shown to protect against ischemia-induced bloodbrain barrier (BBB) disruption. Inflammation contributes...
Oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (OPAHs) are a class of environmentally prevalent compounds with little known information on their effect in vivo. In a recent study conducted using zebrafish as a model, 38 OPAHs were screened for toxicity. This investigation focuses on two of these OPAHs, 7,12-B[a]AQ and BEZO. Both 7,12-B[a]AQ...
Glioblastoma is a malignant brain tumor that has extremely poor prognoses with a 5 year survival rate of less than 5%. The low survival rates of glioblastoma patients is attributed to glioblastoma cells being extremely resistant to radiotherapy and chemotherapy as well as being very invasive. We previously identified calpain...
As organisms age they lose the ability to respond to both exogenous and endogenous stresses, therefore placing them at a greater risk for the development of many diseases. The transcription factor Nrf2 is responsible for the induction of many oxidative stress response genes and therefore 3proteins. Additionally, Nrf2-mediated stress response...
Although U.S. Latin@s are more affected by major depressive disorder than non-Latin@ whites, they are less likely to utilize mental health services. The purpose of this project is to create a children’s book that promotes the utilization of mental health services among U.S. Latin@s with major depressive disorder. This book...
M. avium is an opportunistic pathogen that primarily infects macrophages. In order to survive within the macrophage, M. avium secretes proteins into the host cell cytoplasm to inhibit specific functions such as phagosome acidification, altering pathways as well as initiating apoptosis. However, little is known about how those secreted proteins...
It is no doubt that the face of Ernesto "Che" Guevara is recognized
globally as it appears on currency, merchandise, at protest marches, and in art.
However, there is little agreement on what this handsome face represents or what
the Argentine revolutionary fought for. Some view Guevara as a humanitarian...
In this investigation, six different endogenous thyroid hormone derivatives—T₄, T₃, TA₄, TA₃, T₁-Amine, and N-Acetylated T₁-Amine—were tested to gain insight into their permeability coefficients and efflux ratios across a monolayer of Madin-Darby Canine Kidney (MDCK II) cells. The results indicate that T₃ and T₄ were unable to traverse the membrane...