The
quality
of
red
wine
is
primarily
determined
by
the
flavor,
aroma,
and
color.
A
common
wine
making
technique
used
to
improve
these
characteristics
is
the
pre-‐fermentation maceration. In this study two pre-fermentation maceration
techniques were used, one was a traditional cold soak and the second involved
addition of dry...
Gene expression is largely regulated by the binding of transcription factors to short sequences of DNA (transcription factor binding sites) to drive or repress transcription of an adjacent gene. Identifying the key transcription factor binding sites associated with a particular biological outcome provides an avenue for tailored transcriptional regulation in...
Specialized or secondary metabolism is a collection of pathways and small molecules that, while beneficial to an organism, are not strictly necessary for survival. Plants use secondary metabolites to, among other things, attract pollinators, defend against biotic and abiotic stressors, and form symbioses. Natural products from plants have seen an...
Gene regulation is a complex mechanism that controls the spatial and temporal expression of genes in a living cell. My dissertation studies focus on two problems. First, tissue-specific gene expression prediction from DNA sequence and chromatin state, and second, the accurate discovery of small over-represented regulatory circuits in gene regulatory...
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...
Null networks are a type of random graph that is favored for the analysis of a wide variety of real-world networks, including gene-regulatory networks, food webs, and species co-occurrence matrices. As a hypothesis-generating tool, null networks are invaluable because they can reveal network motifs and unusual large-scale properties of networks...
Bangladesh is a developing country with burdens of environmental pollution and disparities in maternal and child health. Arsenic, manganese, and lead are pervasive environmental contaminants throughout Bangladesh with major exposures through drinking water and ambient pollution. Chronic exposures to arsenic, manganese, and lead in sensitive populations such as pregnant women,...
Heavy metals have historically been popular for use in cosmetics manufacturing due to the colorful pigmentation of heavy metal compounds. In the case of sindoor, a cosmetic used by married Hindu women for religious purposes, mercury sulfide, lead tetroxide, and lead chromate are compounds suspected to still be involved in...
Mercury and arsenic are known developmental toxicants and environmental exposures are ubiquitous worldwide from natural and anthropogenic sources. Prenatal exposure to both contaminants are independently associated with adverse perinatal health outcomes and latent disease risk that could be in part mediated by epigenetic reprogramming events. Fetal programming events involving DNA...