European Hazelnut (Corylus avellana L.) is an important crop in the Pacific Northwest where around 5% of the world's hazelnuts are produced. Hazelnut production in the Pacific Northwest is threatened by eastern filbert blight (EFB) caused by the pyrenomycete Anisogramma anomala. Host resistance is a useful strategy to control disease,...
Several dolphin species have global distributions. The extent of their radiation and limits to gene flow are presumably a product of oceanographic features both recent and historical, behavioral specializations and social organization. Rough-toothed dolphins (Steno bredanensis) are globally distributed in tropical and subtropical waters and are generally found in depths...
Pre-existing Expressed Sequence Tag (EST) libraries (1,305 sequences) and a newly constructed microsatellite-enriched genomic library (136 clones) from the V. corymbosum cultivar 'Bluecrop' were screened for unique Simple Sequence Repeat (SSR)-containing sequences. Our goal was to develop a set of robust SSR markers for use in managing the National Clonal...
Plethodontid salamanders are model organisms for studying evolutionary questions of gene flow, restricted ranges, and speciation. Plethodon, a diverse genus within Plethodontidae, is widely distributed in eastern and western North America. Much research has been based in the eastern United States where diversity of these salamanders is high. Because of...
This dissertation describes the application and development of molecular tools that have great potential for use in studying variation in strawberry germplasm. The first study evaluated 91 microsatellite (simple sequence repeat, SSR) markers for transferability in 22 Fragaria species and their utility in fingerprinting octoploid strawberries. Out of the transferable...
DNA mismatch repair (MMR) is an evolutionary conserved process that functions to maintain genomic integrity through the correction of mismatches that have escaped proofreading. Mutations in the MMR gene Mlh1 are associated with approximately 50% of all cases of Lynch syndrome, a hereditary predisposition to colorectal cancer, through varying and...
The highly conserved multi-protein mismatch repair (MMR) system is known for its ability to correct post replication errors in genomic DNA. A hallmark of MMR deficiency in all organisms is microsatellite instability. The initiating proteins in the eukaryotic MMR system are hetrodimers formed with an integral MSH2 subunit and one...