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Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
Keloids are disfiguring, painful and itchy but benign fibrotic skin lesions characterized by excessive dermal fibroblast proliferation and collagen deposition. They occur in susceptible individuals due to abnormal wound healing. Keloids...
Genetic animal models have become an increasingly useful tool in addressing pathophysiological changes in neuropsychiatric disorders at the molecular, synaptic and circuitry levels. Previous genetic and postmortem studies have identified...
Accurate chromosome segregation during meiosis is critical for generating genetic diversity and for producing gametes with the correct number of chromosomes. After meiotic S-phase, homologs pair, recombine, and then separate in meiosis I...
Psychosis may arise from an altered modulation of the mesolimbic dopamine system. However, the source of upstream disturbance and the underlying neural circuitry remain unknown. It is generally agreed that genetic susceptibility...
Maintenance of the integrity of the genome is vital to survival and the small non-histone protein Heterochromatin protein 1 (HP1) plays an important role in the process. Here we demonstrate two roles for HP1 in regulating transcription...
Protein phosphorylation ' a reversible covalent process ' has evolved as one of the major posttranslational modifications that targets numerous transcription factors. Apoptosis (programmed cell death) is an irreversible intrinsic...
Liver fibrosis is the common end stage of all chronic liver diseases, such as chronic viral hepatitis, alcoholism, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, autoimmune hepatitis, alpha 1 anti-trypsin deficiency and some rare metabolic diseases....
Accurate replication of DNA once and only once per cell cycle is an essential process for all living organisms. Despite many studies aimed at understanding this phenomenon, no mechanism describing where and when replication initiates in...
The centrosome is the microtubule organizing center (MTOC) in higher eukaryotes. During meiosis, proper duplication and separation of the centrosomes are necessary for accurate chromosome segregation and leads to the production of...
Fibrosis is characterized by excessive synthesis of type I collagen which impedes the normal function of an affected organ. Type I collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body, produced by the folding of two a1(I) polypeptides...
LARP6 in Type I Collagen Expression and Embryonic Development: Role in Partition of Collagen mRNA to ER Membrane and in PIh1D3 Mediated Xenopus Development
Excessive production of Type I collagen is the hallmark of fibrotic disorders. The production of Type I collagen is mainly regulated at post-transcriptional level by a COLLAGEN mRNAs binding protein La ribonucleoprotein domain family...
This dissertation focuses on microtubule assembly mechanisms and functions in dividing and non-dividing cells. In dividing cells, centrosome is the major microtubule-organizing center (MTOC). Ninein (Nin) is a centrosomal protein whose...
Zika virus (ZIKV) became a global health concern in 2016 due to its links to congenital microcephaly and other birth defects. ZIKV is part of the genus flavivirus, a class of positive(+)- sense single-stranded RNA viruses. Flavivirus...
The process of normal wound repair after tissue injury follows a closely regulated sequence involving inflammation, the recruitment, activation and proliferation of fibroblasts and the secretion of extracellular matrix, which culminates...
A Tale of Two Drosophila Centrosome Proteins: The Regulation of Cilium Functions by Rootletin, and the Conversion of Sperm Mitochondria into Microtubule-Organizing Centers by CnnT
Using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism, this dissertation dissects molecular and biological functions of three proteins: Rootletin (Root), testis-specific Centrosomin (CnnT) and Spermitin (Sprn). Centrosomes are...
Anhedonia, or difficulty experiencing pleasure, is a core deficit in depression. Depressed patients expressing anhedonia show increased treatment resistance and greater suicidal ideation when compared to non-anhedonic depressed patients....
Autosomal recessive primary microcephaly (MCPH, MIM 251200) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that results from a loss of neural progenitors in the embryonic neocortex. Patients with MCPH have a significantly small brain and exhibit...
Genome analysis in several eukaryotes shows a surprising number of transcripts that do not encode conventional messenger RNAs. Once considered noise, these non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) appear capable of controlling gene expression by various...
Maintaining the balance of protein synthesis and degradation is essential for efficient proteostasis and organismal health. The 26S proteasome is a large, multisubunit proteolytic complex that functions as the primary mechanism for...
In eukaryotes, each individual chromosome is one large DNA molecule packed by histone proteins into a compact nucleoprotein filament. Two molecules each of core histone proteins H2A, H2B, H3 and H4 assemble to form an octamer protein...
Protein aggregates formation is a common characteristic of many neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson's disease (PD), Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). Effective clearance of those toxic protein...
Synthesis and degradation of proteins in a cell must be carefully balanced to ensure organismal health. The 26S proteasome is a large protein complex that carries out most regulated protein degradation in eukaryotes. The assembly, ...
Our DNA is under continuous stress by endogenous and exogenous attacks such as genotoxic chemicals, ionizing radiation, and metabolic products. DNA damage is extremely detrimental, even a single unrepaired damage is sufficient to kill a...
Specific mutations in the replacement histone variant H3.3 are known to drive cancers such as glioblastomas, chondroblastomas and large cell tumors of the bone primarily in children and young adults. Several recent studies have suggested...
Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
