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From developmental biology to tissue-engineering: printing blood vessels
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009)
-engineering, evidenced by the fact that they can elicit adverse host responses and interfere with, rather than guide, direct cellcell interaction as well as assembly and alignment of cell-produced extracellular matrix. Understanding the physical principles of biological...
SIRT1 deacetylation regulates NFAT transcriptional activity
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] The class III histone deacetylase SIRT1 plays important roles in aging, metabolism and biological clock control. We have recently demonstrated that SIRT1 is a critical factor...
The effects of histone acetylation on the maize allele PL1-blotched
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2007)
Covalent modifications of DNA and nucleosomal histone proteins associated with eukaryotic chromatin have the potential to alter expression of a gene without change in its DNA sequence. One gene regulated through this ...
Ecological conditions of secondary sexual dimorphism in salix glauca : fundamental and realized dimorphic niche
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2006)
This thesis explores the dimorphic niche of ecological conditions hypothesis as the selective force behind secondary sexual dimorphism in Salix glauca, a dioecious willow shrub. The dimorphic niche hypothesis predicts trait ...
Pollen-pistil interactions in nicotiana
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] To screen for potential mates, angiosperm pistils provide a physical and biochemical barrier that promotes the growth of desirable pollen while ...
Call timing interactions, aggressive behavior, and the role of acoustic cues in chorus formation in treefrogs
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
I studied calling patterns and aggressive behavior of the Bird voiced treefrog, , to assess how dynamic call characters influences males and the factors influencing the onset of choruses and settling patterns of males in ...
Obesity: a growing concern about fetal nutrition
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2006)
Obesity is a growing epidemic and a major health concern in the United States and elsewhere. The Fetal Basis of Adult Disease (FBAD) theory holds that events that occur during development can permanently alter gene expression ...
Heterochrony of floral and mating system characters between Nicotiana longiflora and N. plumbaginifolia
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2007)
The evolution of selfing is one the most fascinating and common trends observed in flowering plants. Selfing flowers are often smaller than their outcrossing relatives, with reduced reproductive effort. The selfing species ...
Role of transmembrane protein strabismus in motor neuron migration in the zebrafish hindbrain
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
Nervous system development involves extensive cell migration, causing immature neurons to move from proliferative zones to specific locations to generate functional circuits. Defective in neuronal migration can cause severe ...
Effects and interactions of endocrine disrupting chemicals and diet on the mouse reproductive system
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2007)
Recent studies have indicated that a number of ubiquitous chemicals found in the environment are linked to a myriad of health concerns, including reproductive abnormalities and increases in infertility, cancer, and obesity ...
Gray treefrog breeding site selection and offspring performance in response to forest management
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2007)
Amphibian diversity and abundance are generally reduced following clearcut logging. These impacts often last for decades, but little is known about why diversity and abundance are depressed. I examined gray treefrog breeding ...
The biology of the Florida scrub endemic millipede: Floridobolus penneri
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2006)
Even though millipedes provide a number of important ecosystem services, the group overall is understudied and nowadays largely ignored in the USA. Most millipedes that are well-studied occur in temperate, mesic environments, ...
Generating temperature sensitive inteins for studying gene functions
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
Reversible and easy to use, temperature-sensitive (TS) mutations, are powerful tools to study the functions of all genes, including essential and pleiotropic ones. However, the rarity of TS alleles and the difficulty of ...
Quantitative biological studies at cellular and sub-cellular level
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2007)
We developed a translational magnetic tweezers for quantitative measurements at cellular and sub-cellular level. In the cellular studies, multiple membrane tethers were extracted simultaneously under constant force transduced ...
Drug resistance in D. discoideum: isolation of 4-nitroquinoline 1-oxide resistant mutants
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2005)
The drug 4-nitroquinoline 1-oxide (4NQO) displays both carcinogenic and antitumor effects, a well known characteristic of many chemotherapeutic drugs. In addition 4NQO shares a similar operating mechanism with the commonly ...
Effects of riparian buffer width on stream salamander populations in the southern Appalachian Mountains
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
Salamanders in the Appalachian region have been extensively studied, but the majority of research assessing the impacts of logging has focused on terrestrial species that are not dependent on stream habitats for egg ...
Interaction of RNA polymerase II and the RNA silencing machinery in heterochromatin formation of Drosophila
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2008)
inert it has an important role to play in many important biological processes such as meiotic recombination, genomic stability and separation of sister chromatids in mitosis. Heterochromatin is thought to be formed by transcription via RNA Pol II...
The effects of axotomy on the biophysical properties of reticulospinal neurons in larval lamprey
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2006)
Following severe spinal cord injury (SCI), in adult higher vertebrates there is little or no axonal regeneration, and animals remain paralyzed below the lesion. In contrast, lower vertebrates such as the lamprey, following ...
Evolution of signal frequency in Neoconocephalus (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae) : a study of perceptual and environmental sources of selection
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2007)
[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Mate-attraction signals offer an ideal opportunity to examine the sources of selection that shape traits and trait diversity, as they are very diverse ...
Understanding genomic evolution and segregation distortion in solanaceae : a COSII linkage map in Nicotiana
(University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009)
Genetic linkage maps are excellent tools to investigate genomic evolution, genomic structure and quantitative trait loci. In our study, we created comparative linkage maps in a reciprocal cross between Nicotiana longiflora ...