Aggregations of the neustonic hydrozoan Velella velella occur periodically in the northern California Current. Despite the regular occurrence of notable bloom events in this productive upwelling zone, little is known about their trophic ecology. We used gut content and stable isotope analyses (SIA) to elucidate V. velella prey selectivity and...
Understanding the factors that control predation in pelagic communities can inform predictions of community structure in marine ecosystems. Ubiquitous and selective predators such as cnidarian hydromedusae rely on their nematocysts to capture and retain prey but it is not clear how the density and spatial distribution of these cells relate...
This research focused on population dynamics of two gelatinous zooplankters (Aequorea & Pyrosoma atlanticum) in the northern California Current to assess their relationship to environmental conditions and role in the pelagic ecosystem. Data collected since 1999 showed seasonal and interannual fluctuations in the abundance and distribution of Aequorea in the...
Vitamin E improved liver histology in children and adults with NAFLD who participated in TONIC and PIVENS clinical trials,
but with significant inter-individual variability in its efficacy. Cytochrome P450 4F2 (CYP4F2) is the major enzyme
metabolizing Vit E, with two common genetic variants (V433M, rs2108622 and W12G, rs3093105) found to...
Full Text:
; Melissa Paiz; Heather Patton, MD;
Jeffrey B. Schwimmer, MD; Claude Sirlin, MD; Patricia Ugalde-Nicalo
Anthropogenic induced climate change is predicted to alter distribution of existing plant populations. As plants migrate over space and time, populations often fragment and contract, affecting basic elements of population dynamics (e.g., population size, gene flow, genetic diversity, etc.). Little is known, however, how these impacts on plant species will...
The bottleneck in the turnover of soil organic matter (SOM) is the conversion of large molecular compounds into smaller compounds that can be transported through a cell membrane of a microbe for processing. Once inside the cell, organic compounds can be converted into biomass or be respired. The microbial depolymerization...
The focus of this thesis is to design, characterize, and apply novel computational methods and molecular systems to interrogate heterogeneous human gut microbiome-related phenomena. In Chapter 2, I design, implement, and characterize a method for embedding co-occurrence patterns derived from massive 16s amplicon datasets. I use this method to 1....
The Cretaceous Merín aborted-rift basin of eastern Uruguay is composed of sub-alkaline Paraná-Etendeka province basaltic flows and shallow intrusives (~133 to 131 Ma), rhyolitic ignimbrites (~130 to 128 Ma) and associated mildly alkaline to alkaline intrusions and volcanic rocks (~128 to 127 Ma). Four intrusive complexes from 20 to >30...