As part of an HHMI funded research project, I showed that overexpression (OE) of actin (ACT2) in Arabidopsis thaliana alters the expression of genes involved in plant immunity. Others have previously shown that knockout (KO) mutants of actin depolymerizing factor 4 are affected in the same gene as ACT2-OE. For...
In this dissertation, I present the work of developing more efficient and economical techniques for fragmenting large bio-molecules, and ultimately making mass spectrometry a more powerful tool in proteomics, DNA sequencing, and other areas of biomolecular analysis.
Aiming at lowering the installation and operating cost, and delivering electron capture dissociation...
Benzylsuccinate (BSA), methylbenzylsuccinate (methylBSA), and ethylbenzylsuccinate (ethylBSA) are unambiguous anaerobic biotransformation products from toluene, xylenes, and ethylbenzene decay, respectively, and may be used to indicate intrinsic bioremediation is occurring at hydrocarbon-contaminated sites. In order to improve upon current methods that detect and quantify anaerobic hydrocarbon metabolites in field samples, solid-phase-extraction...
Enzymes play an important role in the environment, they breakdown natural-occurring and anthropogenic molecules so that they can be transported into cells and utilized. Enzyme assays are routinely used in soil science and oceanography to measure the activities of specific processes and to serve as general indicators of microbial activity....
In this dissertation, I present electronic spectroscopy of a few biologically relevant species and their complexes with solvent molecules in the gas phase using a variety of techniques, including resonantly enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI), laser induced fluorescence (LIF), and zero kinetic energy (ZEKE) photoelectron spectroscopy. My work on several methylated...
A novel, portable, filter fluorometer was developed for the determination of chloroform and TCE at environmentally-relevant levels when coupled with improved sampling techniques and reagents. Reagents selective for the TCE or chloroform convert these toxic species into fluorescent species that can be monitored. The fluorometer is based on LED excitation...
In situ reduction of hydrido-tris-(3,5-dimethylpyrazolyl)borato(trioxo) rhenium(V) with triphenylphosphine or triethylphosphite leads to a reactive rhenium(V) species that catalytically deoxygenates epoxides at 75-105°C. The reaction is stereospecific, except for trans- and cis-butene oxide which formed minor amounts of the opposite isomer. A variety of different functional groups were tolerated and even...
Neurofilament proteins are intermediate filaments found in the neuronal cytoskeleton. Phosphorylation of these proteins is considered important for the assembly and stability of the filaments. Accurate molecular weights have been difficult to measure, largely because the high degree of phosphorylation results in M[subscript r]'S that are significantly greater than dictated...
A series of compounds, 7-8 and 20-25, were tested as competitive inhibitors of 2,5-dihydroxyacetanilide epoxidase I (DHAE I) and DHAE II. A Hammett plot was constructed for each enzyme to determine the effect of electron density on inhibition. DHAE I gave a linear, highly correlated plot (r²=0.91) that signifies the...