All Abstracts

It is known that Chlamydia pathogenesis causes complications such as pelvic inflammatory disease and tubal factor infertility. In this study, we will determine the role of circadian rhythms on the outcome of Chlamydia infection. We hypothesize that the time of day of infection is important in determ...

In order to establish a protocol for stem cell differentiation, we experiment on different methods in C2C12 cells. To begin, C2C12 cells transduced with the myoD promoter were grown to full confluency. When differentiation began, the control cells grown horizontally were compared to the experimental...

Classifying amoebae is difficult due to limited morphological characters that can be used to distinguish them. Biodiversity within amoeboid organisms still remains poorly studied. DNA sequences such as small subunit ribosomal RNA and Cox1 genes are almost exactly the same between Cochliopodium minus...

Under ambient light and in normal cells, protection against apoptosis, namely cytoprotection, is mediated by nitric oxide induced (NO-induced) elevations in cGMP, which activate cGMP-dependent protein kinase I (PKGI) isozymes. PKGI phosphorylates BAD, preventing it from binding BCL-XL, thus leading ...

Dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE) is classified as a persistent organic pollutant that is a breakdown product of DDT. DDE is a highly fat-soluble compound that accumulates in the fatty tissues of insects, wildlife, and humans, particularly in adipose and brain tissues. In previous studies the g...

There is much misunderstanding about the evolutionary narrative of Amoebozoa. The phylogeny of amoeba has been understudied due to their complex life cycle.  Amoebozoa often switch from an active stage of amoeba in the trophozoite form to an inactive cyst stage. The amoeba examined in this stud...

Pharmaceutical testing on epigenetic effects of drugs is very limited. The use of vertebrates as preclinical research models is constrained by their long mating and generational times, leading to very low numbers of progeny to test and assess. In contrast, invertebrates such as insects are ethically...

Primate immunodeficiency viruses have similar physical, morphological, and biochemical characteristics but differ in their behavior. Many African primates have coevolved with these virus, allowing for disease-free productive infection. Molecular variations may explain these variations in outcomes. T...

Urbanization is an increase in the number of people that live in relatively small areas and can cause drastic changes in land use. For example, more cement and concrete may be used to accommodate the growing population of people moving to a city. This research analyzes how urbanization affects bird ...

Blood-feeding is a trait that has evolved multiple times within flies (Diptera). The goal of this study is to compare gene expression between two blood-feeding flies, the blow-fly Protocalliphora sailia and mosquitos to identify conserved genes related to blood-feeding. This is interesting because t...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common malignant brain tumor in adults. The poor prognosis of GBM is associated with the tumor's highly malignant nature and the inability of some treatment modalities to transport due to the blood-brain barrier. Immunotherapy has been recognized as a promising therape...

Antibiotics are produced by microbes in the soil and can slow the growth of plants. For example, kanamycin, which is an aminoglycoside, affects cells by binding to ribosomes and inhibiting translocation. Atwbc19 is a gene in Arabidopsis plants that has been known to mitigate the effects of antibioti...

Plants mine the soil to obtain essential nutrients and in so doing, they can take up several antibiotics produced in the soil by certain microorganisms. One such antibiotic is kanamycin. Plants are sensitive to antibiotics and appear to have developed different mechanisms of resistance. For example,...

The symptoms of Hereditary Nonpolyposis Colerectal Cancer (HNPCC) are caused by inherited defects in the DNA Mismatch Repair Mechanism (MMR), a mechanism responsible for fixing the mutations that occur during DNA replication. Components of MMR, MSH2 and MSH6 form complexes to recognize the mutations...

Pharmaceuticals are not currently tested for trans-generational and epigenetic side effects. Therefore, research and data in that area are limited. Recently, invertebrates such as insects have been suggested for this purpose as more ethically acceptable. We used the red flour beetle, Tribolium casta...

Sexual reproduction is a tool used to increase genetic diversity amongst species. Previous studies of small eukaryotic microbe life cycles, including Amoebozoa, have assumed these organisms to reproduce asexually. Interestingly, studying the lifecycle of Cochliopodium, a genus of amoeba, and ot...

Circadian rhythms are behavioral and physiological changes that occur on a 24-hour cycle. The timing of these rhythms are set by a biological clock located in the hypothalamus of the brain which is set by the timing of light input. Abrupt changes in the light-dark cycle, such as an altered light-dar...

  Invasive species are organisms that are not native to a specific location and can potentially cause harm to their new community. These organisms are not harmful simply because of what species they are, instead they are harmful when they enter foreign habitats and disrupt the flow of the ecos...

Antibiotics kill the bacteria or make it harder for them to grow. However, some bacteria are no longer affected by these drugs and are termed as “resistant”. Antibiotic resistance is when bacteria have the ability to resist the effects of antibiotics and continue to thrive in spite of treatment....

Metformin is the most widely used therapeutic for Type 2 diabetes, and it has also been shown to have antineoplastic properties by modulating tumor growth and T cell responses. Immunotherapy for cancer is becoming a promising approach to treat metastatic disease because of the rising pre-clinical an...

Valproic acid (VPA) is an organic acid and known ERG inhibitor by regulating histone deacetylase (HDAC). HDAC regulates transcription and is known to be highly expressed by ERG. ERG, or ETS-related gene, is a transcription factor in the ETS-1 family. Several studies have shown that ERG plays a large...

Globotriaosylceramide (Gb3) is a glycolipid molecule that serves as a receptor for Shiga toxin molecules. Shiga toxin molecules are produced by some strains of E. coli bacteria. Infection with Shiga toxin-producing bacteria can lead to hemorrhagic colitis in adults and hemolytic uremic syndrome in c...

Organochlorides, a component of pesticides, are suspected of contributing to cancer risk due to their effect on DNA methylation. Our previous study showed that among individuals with greater than 100ng/mL of organochloride DDE in their blood, the genes TERT, HCK, and DIO3 displayed differential meth...

Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) are a group of bone marrow derived leukemia’s defined by overproduction of one or more myeloid blood cell lineages. MPNs contain genetic alterations which “clonally emerge” or arise as the disease progresses, resulting in a mixed pool of different clones. Th...

On nearly every surface and inside almost every organism, there are millions of tiny microbes that are invisible to the naked eye. Some of these microbes, known as symbionts, live in symbiosis or within other organisms. These tiny microbes include bacteria, fungi, and viruses. Honeybees (Apis mellif...

Phenology is the study of seasonal natural phenomena. Leaf-out is the specific time a tree’s leaves bud. Shifts in climate change can impact leaf-out timing and other ecological aspects. Instability within the ecosystem can cause issues for other organisms. It is believed that climate change can d...

Cochliopodium species are difficult to identify based on morphological characters due to cryptic diversity. Recent molecular analyses (DNA sequence data) of barcoding markers such as COI have begun to reveal the true diversity of this genus. We present morphological (light microscope) and molecular ...

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is a group of blood disorders which affect over 100,000 people in the United States. A common complication of SCD is the blockage and subsequent damage to vascular endothelial tissue, leading to vaso-occlusive crises. These symptoms are accompanied by chronic pain, inflamma...

The emergence of new leaves on woody plants marks the onset of the growing season and affects a host of ecosystem functions. Phenology is the study of natural annual phenomena, including the timing of leaf-out. Leaf-out is defined as the moment when the full shape of the leaf is visible on trees. Th...

Candida auris is an emerging pathogen that exhibits a reduced susceptibility to antifungal agents and demonstrates a potential to cause a wide spectrum of human mycotic infections. C. auris genotypes vary based on geography and cluster into four clades. Given the genetic diversity among the clades, ...

Shiga toxins (STX) are produced by certain Escherichia coli strains that cause “hamburger disease”. The toxins contain three different sites that bind to a glycolipid, the cell surface receptor globotriaosylceramide (Gb3). Roles for Gb3 in normal cell functions are largely unknown. However, the ...

Biofilm formation (BF), the aggregation of bacteria encased in an extracellular matrix, is an emerging scientific and health concern in many environments including hospitals, infrastructures, and industrial production sites. Pathogenic Neisseria species, N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae, form biof...

Epigenetic changes modify genes in ways that do not change the DNA sequence but changes their level of gene expression. CpG islands regulate the expression of nearby genes; however, transcriptional complexes involved in gene expression can be repelled or attracted by methyl groups modified through e...

Plants take up essential nutrients from the soil through their roots, and in the process absorb substances released by soil microorganisms such as antibiotics. Plants appear to have developed resistance mechanisms. One example of this phenomenon is observed in Arabidopsis thaliana plants, which poss...

Organochlorides are a component of pesticides. Previous studies have shown that individuals with >100ng/mL of 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis (p-chlorophenyl)-ethylene (p,p-DDE) in their blood exhibited altered methylation of the genes DIO3, TERT, and HCK; any of which could have implications in cancer prog...

Cysteine cathepsins are potent collagenases and elastases that regulate tissue maintenance and contribute to tissue degeneration. Extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling by cathepsins is linked to a number of diseases such as cancer, osteoporosis and tendinopathy. Our lab has shown that cathepsin K (c...

Intermediate filaments include a group of proteins primarily involved in structural support as opposed to other cytoskeletal proteins that have specialized functions. Intermediate filaments are organized into different classes due to their variety. Intermediate filaments are found in most Opisthokon...

The issue of global warming or climate change, has fostered a great deal of interest to ecologists around the world. Climate change is a significant topic because of its adverse effects on the life cycles of several mammals and plants. The study of the impacts made by climate change on the timing of...

Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most frequently diagnosed malignancies among men worldwide and the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. In many cases, PCa develops slowly, but it can be more aggressive and metastasize to other parts of the body. Our recent studies ...

Trichosphaerium is a polymorphic, multinucleated, marine amoeba. It contains spicules consisting of calcium carbonate embedded in the glycocalyx covering that encapsulates the cell membrane. Microbial eukaryotes usually have definite shape and very few are observed to show multiple morphologies that...

Bacteria are small single-cell, prokaryotic microorganisms. They are normally a few micrometers in length and usually grow together in millions as colonies. Bacteria can vary in shape: spherical (cocci), rod shaped (bacilli), and spiral (spirilla). One of the major factors that can affect bacterial ...

Actin is highly conserved and participates in more protein-protein interactions than any other known protein. It is a critical player in many cellular functions, ranging from cell motility to the regulation of transcription. Even though Amoebozoa has been evolutionarily linked as closely related to ...

Hereditary Nonpolyposis Colorectal Cancer (HNPCC) is an inherited disease that promotes the development of cancer. HNPCC patients are also at risk of developing other cancers throughout the body. HNPCC is linked to defects in the DNA mismatch repair mechanism (MMR). MMR corrects single point mutatio...

Endosperm is a tissue produced inside the seed of flowering plants. It surrounds the embryo and provides nutrients. It also provides signals to regulate embryo growth. Endosperm development consists of the syncytial and cellularization phases. Interestingly, embryo growth is faster in the cellulariz...

Neisseria gonorrhoeae, a pathogenic sexually-transmitted bacterium, is becoming untreatable due to increased antibiotic resistance (AR). Related commensal Neisseria bacteria are non-pathogenic and are often found in the human oral and nasopharynx, but they are rarely studied. We seek (1) to characte...

It is known that plants have antibiotic resistance genes, which suggests that plants are exposed to antibiotics. Various microorganisms are found in soil including among those closely associated with plant roots. However, their ability to produce antibiotics has not been examined. We analyzed plant ...

Significantly high racial disparities in preterm birth rates exist between White and Black women, even when accounting for socioeconomic status and known risk factors. One potential explanation is epigenetics. Differentially methylated genes in Black women who had given birth prematurely have been i...

Both male and female red flour beetle, Tribolium castaneum, have a high mating rate. Male beetles demonstrate clear pre-copulatory mate choice. Males prefer mature females over callow females, virgin females over previously mated females, and younger females over older females. We hypothesize that m...

Kryptopterus vitreolus, known as the glass catfish, is a small species of Asian glass catfish found in a series of coastal river basins of peninsular Thailand. The glass catfish is known as an electroreceptive fish, but is not known to be electrogenic. Bioelectrogenesis means the purposeful generati...

Ash trees around the world have a significant role in our lives from medicine to religious purposes. Recently, ash trees have been in decline in the U.S. due to the Emerald Ash Borers (EAB) which are small beetles that were first detected in North America in 2002. The rapid decline of ash trees can ...

Most angiosperms have nuclear endosperm, which consist of an initial syncytial phase and a cellularization phase. Before endosperm is fully cellularized, the embryo growth rate is relatively slow. Our work indicates that the expression of an Invertase inhibitor (InvINH1) during the syncytial phase c...

It is common to find differential rates of methylation among various cancers. Previous studies suggest that exposure to organochlorines, a major component of pesticides, leads to differential methylation, and thus ultimately plays a role in the development of cancers. Previous analysis has shown tha...

The ant, fungal cultivar, and Escovopsis system is one of mutualism and parasitism. Attine ants grow fungal cultivars that they feed and in turn use for food. Escovopsis is a parasitic fungus that uses the cultivated fungus as a host. However, studies have shown that Escovopsis is often but not alwa...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in men worldwide. DNA methylation is an epigenetic mechanism used to control gene expression. To understand the correlation between this epigenetic mechanism and cancer, single nucleotide polymorphism from the human genomic matrix are analyzed using R...

Acid Sensing Ion Channels (ASICs) are proton-gated cation channels belonging to the degenerin/epithelial Na+ channel (DEG/ENaC) superfamily. There are at least four genes that encode six alternatively spliced transcripts: ASIC1a, ASIC1b, ASIC2a, ASIC2b, ASIC3 and ASIC4. ASIC1a, a primary subunit exp...

Pathogenic Neisseria, N. meningitidis and N. gonorrhoeae that respectively cause meningitis and gonorrhea, form biofilms in vivo, and while in these structures, display increased resistance to antibiotics, compromising treatment. Biofilm formations (BF) are aggregates of microorganisms encased in an...

Iron plays an important role for plant growth and development. In Arabidopsis thaliana, the Ferric Chelate Reductase Defective 3 (FRD3) gene plays an essential role in the uptake of iron. FRD3 transports citrate into the xylem, which form a complex with iron and enable its transport over long distan...

Neisseria meningitidis, an agent of bacterial meningitis, is carried by 70% of the healthy population, where it forms biofilms in the human oral and nasopharynx. A biofilm is an aggregate of surface-associated bacteria enclosed in an extracellular polymeric substance matrix, often associated with in...

The field of cellular reprogramming has the potential open avenues for disease modeling and personalized medicine. Many protocols have been developed to differentiate embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells into neurons, but a simple and efficient method for creating matured neurons i...

African American (AA) men are disproportionally affected by prostate cancer (PCa) compared to men of any other ancestral background. Previous studies suggest that there are genes that play a role in PCa development and metastasis. Studies have also shown that during cancer progression, cancer cells ...

Maternal adaptation to physiological shifts during pregnancy is essential for both successful pregnancy, parturition and newborn health. The physiological changes that occur during pregnancy could be detected at the transcriptional level. However, little research has been conducted on gene regulatio...

Multiple myeloma (MM) currently accounts for less than 1% of total cancer occurrence worldwide. Despite decades of research and design of therapeutics, clinical responses to molecular-targeted drugs tend to vary and are often unsuccessful. This hematological malignancy originates in the plasma cells...