Faculty Mentor: Abby O’Connor Students: Chris Bregna One of the driving forces in the field of organometallic chemistry is catalysis, where a catalyst is defined as an additive substance that allows a chemical reaction to occur by lowering its barrier to activation. Nickel, a relatively inexpensive metal found in high abundance in the Earth’s crust,… Continue Reading
Monthly Archives: June 2012
Novel Ring Forming Reactions
Faculty Mentor: David Hunt Students: John Farrokh Benzo-fused 7-membered heterocyclic ketones have been shown to possess pharmacological activity. The goal of our project is to develop a new method of synthesizing these compounds. Starting materials were typically prepared by reacting a compound unique to each reaction with 2-cyanobenzylbromide. The reaction utilized to prepare these products… Continue Reading
Testing hormone mimic function against biological protein targets implied in human health
Faculty Mentor: Danielle Guarracino Students: Jessica Gruskos & Ari Goldwaser Vasopressin and Oxytocin are two naturally occurring hormones with biological importance. Vasopressin helps regulate water levels in the body, and lack of vasopressin is associated with Neurogenic Diabetes Insipidus (DI). Oxytocin has many biologically important functions such as initiating uterine contraction, cell signaling, and regulating… Continue Reading
Single-Molecule Investigation of Multi-Domain Folding: A Fluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy Study
Faculty Mentor: Michelle Bunagan Students: Andrew Apicello & Priya Gupta The focus of our project is on human serum albumin (HSA), which is a protein that can bind to many ligands (ions or molecules that form a certain type of bond with the molecule in question) and is therefore important in the study of interactions… Continue Reading
Identification of novel motifs in unaligned protein sequences Genetic and Biochemical analysis of enzymes that regulate plant growth and metabolism
Faculty Mentor: Leeann Thornton Students: Joseph Montes, Dylan McDivitt, & Amanda Soler In order grow enough food and plant products for the increasing human population, agriculture productivity must continue to improve. Currently, most plants only yield about 20 percent of their potential productivity when grown in the field. Much is unknown about how plants respond… Continue Reading
The molecular regulation of pattern formation in zebrafish-do flies and fish use the same genes to regulate key events during the formation of the embryo
Faculty Mentor: Marcia O’Connell Students: William Cavallo In our lab we study the early development of the vertebrate species zebrafish. We are currently involved in studying a family of genes that are maternally inherited. My personal project is researching how the expression of a maternal mRNA called ElrA is regulated during development. ElrA codes for… Continue Reading
Regulation of gurken expression during Drosophila melanogaster oogenesis
Faculty Mentor: Amanda Norvell Student: Letitia Thompson During Drosophila oogenesis, the TGF-alpha protein Gurken (Grk) is responsible for pattering the dorsal-ventral (D-V) axis of the egg and future embryo. Consequently, Grk distribution within the ovary is tightly controlled and the spatial and temporal regulation of Grk protein activity is, in part, achieved through post-transcriptional mechanisms.… Continue Reading
Development of a platform independent sequence viewer
Faculty Mentor: Sudhir Nayak Students: Emily Keppen Over the course of this project, we studied the life extension of Caenohabditis elegans (C. elegans) in response to the activation of the HIF-1 (Hypoxia Inducible Factor) pathway. The HIF-1 pathway is activated by low oxygen conditions, also known as hypoxia. When activated, HIF-1 upregulates the expression of… Continue Reading
Nuclear envelope localization of GLD-1 protein
Faculty Mentor: Sudhir Nayak Students: Jen Aleman My project focused on discovering the mechanisms of gld-1 regulation. In C. elegans, GLD-1 (defective in Germ Line Development) is an RNA-binding protein and acts as a translational repressor. The GLD-1 protein binds to mRNAs in order to block translation and prevent inappropriate expression of their gene products.… Continue Reading
Genetic variation in native and invasive broomsedge grass populations
Faculty Mentor: Janet Morrison Students: Brian Giacopelli & Michael Readinger Andropogon virginicus is an important grass in old field succession that is native to the eastern regions of the United States and has also been introduced in California and Hawaii. In Hawaii it is considered invasive. In about half of the Eastern populations, A. virginicus… Continue Reading