In biology, function and disease are closely intertwined, requiring the coordination of hundreds of intricate chemical reactions. Interdisciplinary cooperation between chemical and biological approaches is necessary to decipher the chemical links between physiological and pathological conditions. In this arena, the precision tools made possible with chemical biology can manipulate and...
Successfully predicting an accurate estimated cost is important in the assembly planning process. When designing an assembly plan, an accurate estimation ensures that the proposed plan can be achieved within the predetermined budget. However, achieving an accurate prediction is a challenge since it requires professional judgment, which is dependent upon...
In this dissertation, I describe the experimental investigation in electron diffraction of molecules in superfluid helium droplets. The project is part of an overall scheme called ‘single molecule serial electron diffraction imaging’ (SS-EDI), with the ultimate goal of building an apparatus to determine atomic structures from oriented macromolecules. In SS-EDI,...
Sediment cores were retrieved from a landslide-dammed lake, recording events back to the 5th century AD in a forested, mountainous catchment. These cores provide an opportunity to compare the impacts of known recent perturbations, including floods and timber harvesting with those of the early period of the core, flood, fire,...
Research on the population genetics of microbial organisms requires the use of specialized analyses designed for clonal organisms to avoid violating the assumptions of traditional population genetic models. The tools necessary for performing these analyses existed as a set of unrelated software with non-overlapping capabilities and did not cover all...
There has been a tremendous growth in interest in carbon nanodots (C-dots) in the past several years. As a nascent nanomaterial, C-dots have shown great promise in applications that benefit from their superior water dispersibility, low toxicity, non-blinking fluorescent output, chemical and biological compatibility, ease of functionalization and resistance to...
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and oxygen-substituted PAHs (OPAHs) are environmental contaminants present in urban air, dust, soil and water resulting from incomplete combustion of organic materials or fossil fuels; found in crude oil and coal; and formed through photoxidation or biotransformation of microbial. It is widely recognized that PAHs pose...
SAR11 Alphaproteobacteria are the most abundant aerobic chemoheterotrophs in ocean surface waters. Previous studies have indicated SAR11 cells play an important role in marine carbon cycling and consume up to half of some common dissolved organic compounds, such as amino acids. During sequencing of the first SAR11 genome, genes for...
Decline in cardiac pump function is a hallmark of aging where mitochondrial decay is an important underlying cause. Although certainly multifactorial in nature, both dysfunction of the machinery involved in the chemiosmotic process of energy transduction and lower capacity to maintain fatty acid-driven respiration are identified as intrinsic factors of...
Vitamin E was first described in 1922 as an unknown factor required for impregnated rats to carry their offspring to term. In fact, when vitamin E was chemically characterized it was given the name "tocopherol" derived from the Greek: tokos = childbirth; phero = to bear; and –ol, indicating an...