UNT Theses and Dissertations - 37 Matching Results

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Identification and Characterization of an Arabidopsis thaliana Mutant with Tolerance to N-lauroylethanolamine

Description: N-Acylethanolamines (NAEs) are fatty acid derivatives in plants that negatively influence seedling growth. N-Lauroylethanolamine (NAE 12:0), one type of NAE, inhibits root length, increases radial swelling of root tips and reduces root hair numbers in a dose dependent manner in Arabidopis thaliana L. (ecotype Columbia). A forward genetics approach was employed by screening a population of T-DNA “activation-tagged” developed by the Salk Institute lines for NAE resistance to identify potential … more
Date: December 2015
Creator: Adhikari, Bikash
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Proteomic Responses in the Gill of Zebrafish Following Exposure to Ibuprofen and Naproxen

Description: Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) are among the most abundant environmental pharmaceutical contaminants. In this study, a proteomic analysis was conducted to identify proteins differentially expressed in gill tissue of zebrafish (Danio rerio) after a 14-day exposure to the NSAIDs ibuprofen or naproxen. A total of 104 proteins with altered expression as indicated by 2-dimensional electrophoresis were analyzed by liquid chromatography with ion trap mass spectrometry (MS/MS). A total … more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Adhikari, Prem R.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Functional Characterization of Mtnip/latd’s Biochemical and Biological Function

Description: Symbiotic nitrogen fixation occurs in plants harboring nitrogen-fixing bacteria within the plant tissue. The most widely studied association is between the legumes and rhizobia. In this relationship the plant (legumes) provides the bacteria (rhizobia) with reduced carbon derived from photosynthesis in exchange for reduced atmospheric nitrogen. This allows the plant to survive in soil, which is low in available of nitrogen. Rhizobia infect and enter plant root and reside in organs known as nodul… more
Date: December 2013
Creator: Bagchi, Rammyani
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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NSAID effect on prostanoids in fishes: Prostaglandin E2 levels in bluntnose minnows (Pimephales notatus) exposed to ibuprofen.

Description: Prostanoids are oxygenated derivatives of arachidonic acid with a wide range of physiological effects in vertebrates including modulation of inflammation and innate immune responses. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) act through inhibition of cyclooxygenase (COX) conversion of arachidonic acid to prostanoids. In order to better understand the potential of environmental NSAIDS for interruption of normal levels COX products in fishes, we developed an LC/MS/MS-based approach for tissu… more
Date: August 2009
Creator: Bhandari, Khageshor
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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N-Acylethanolamines and Plant Phospholipase D

Description: Recently, three distinct isoforms of phospholipase D (PLD) were identified in Arabidopsis thaliana. PLD α represents the well-known form found in plants, while PLD β and γ have been only recently discovered (Pappan et al., 1997b; Qin et al., 1997). These isoforms differ in substrate selectivity and cofactors required for activity. Here, I report that PLD β and γ isoforms were active toward N-acylphosphatidylethanolamine (NAPE), but PLD α was not. The ability of PLD β and γ to hydrolyze NAPE mar… more
Date: December 1998
Creator: Brown, Shea Austin
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Metabolic Engineering of Raffinose-Family Oligosaccharides in the Phloem Reveals Alterations in Patterns of Carbon Partitioning and Enhances Resistance to Green Peach Aphid

Description: Phloem transport is along hydrostatic pressure gradients generated by differences in solute concentration between source and sink tissues. Numerous species accumulate raffinose-family oligosaccharides (RFOs) in the phloem of mature leaves to accentuate the pressure gradient between source and sinks. In this study, metabolic engineering was used to generate RFOs at the inception of the translocation stream of Arabidopsis thaliana, which transports predominantly sucrose. To do this, three genes, … more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Cao, Te
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Hindrance of the Myosin Power Stroke Posed by the Proximity to the Troponin Complex Identified Using a Novel LRET Fluorescent Nanocircuit

Description: A novel luminescence resonance energy transfer (LRET) nanocircuit assay involving a donor and two acceptors in tandem was developed to study the dynamic interaction of skeletal muscle contraction proteins. The donor transmits energy relayed to the acceptors distinguishing myosin subfragment-1 (S1) lever arm orientations. The last acceptor allows the detection of S1's bound near or in between troponin complexes on the thin filament. Additionally, calcium related changes between troponin T and my… more
Date: May 2007
Creator: Coffee Castro-Zena, Pilar G.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Function of the ENOD8 gene in nodules of Medicago truncatula.

Description: To elaborate on the function(s) of the ENOD8 gene in the nodules of M. truncatula, several different experimental approaches were used. A census of the ENOD8 genes was first completed indicating that only ENOD8.1 (nt10554-12564 of GenBank AF463407) is highly expressed in nodule tissues. A maltose binding protein-ENOD8 fusion protein was made with an E. coli recombinant system. A variety of biochemical assays were undertaken with the MBP-ENOD8 recombinant protein expressed in E. coli, which did … more
Date: December 2006
Creator: Coque, Laurent
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Interactions of N-Acylethanolamine Metabolism and Abscisic Acid Signaling in Arabidopsis Thaliana Seedlings

Description: N-Acylethanolamines (NAEs) are endogenous plant lipids hydrolyzed by fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH). When wildtype Arabidopsis thaliana seeds were germinated and grown in exogenous NAE 12:0 (35 µM and above), growth was severely reduced in a concentration dependent manner. Wildtype A. thaliana seeds sown on exogenous abscisic acid (ABA) exhibited similar growth reduction to that seen with NAE treatment. AtFAAH knockouts grew and developed similarly to WT, but AtFAAH overexpressor lines sh… more
Date: August 2010
Creator: Cotter, Matthew Q.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Manipulating Sucrose Proton Symporters to Understand Phloem Loading

Description: Phloem vascular tissues transport sugars synthesized by photosynthesis in mature leaves by a process called phloem loading in source tissues and unloading in sink tissues. Phloem loading in source leaves is catalyzed by Suc/H+ symporters (SUTs) which are energized by proton motive force. In Arabidopsis the principal and perhaps exclusive SUT catalyzing phloem loading is AtSUC2. In mutant plants harboring a T-DNA insertion in each of the functional SUT-family members, only Atsuc2 mutants demonst… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Dasgupta, Kasturi
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Autophosphorylation and Autoactivation of an S6/H4 Kinase Isolated From Human Placenta

Description: A number of protein kinases have been shown to undergo autophosphorylation, but few have demonstrated a coordinate increase or decrease in enzymatic activity as a result. Described here is a novel S6 kinase isolated from human placenta which autoactivates through autophosphorylation in vitro. This S6/H4 kinase, purified in an inactive state, was shown to be a protein of Mr of 60,000 as estimated by SDS-PAGE and could catalyze the phosphorylation of the synthetic peptide S6-21, the histone H4, a… more
Date: May 1994
Creator: Dennis, Patrick B. (Patrick Brian)
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Stretching the Flexible Myosin II Subfragment Using the Novel Gravitational Force Spectroscope, and the Uncoiling of S2

Description: Familial Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) causes ventricle walls to thicken and often leads to sudden death especially in adults. Mutations in the subfragment 2 (S2) of β-cardiac myosin are implicated in the genetic disorder. This S2 region is a coiled-coil rod region resulting from the dimeric form of myosin II. It has been proposed that an elastic quality allows normal S2 to absorb force during the powerstroke according to the sliding filament model. To test the flexibility of single mo… more
Date: May 2010
Creator: Dunn, James W.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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FLP-mediated conditional loss of an essential gene to facilitate complementation assays

Description: Commonly, when it is desirable to replace an essential gene with an allelic series of mutated genes, or genes with altered expression patterns, the complementing constructs are introduced into heterozygous plants, followed by the selection of homozygous null segregants. To overcome this laborious and time-consuming step, the newly developed two-component system utilizes a site-specific recombinase to excise a wild-type copy of the gene of interest from transformed tissues. In the first componen… more
Date: December 2007
Creator: Ganesan, Savita
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Fluorescence labeling and computational analysis of the strut of myosin's 50 kDa cleft.

Description: In order to understand the structural changes in myosin S1, fluorescence polarization and computational dynamics simulations were used. Dynamics simulations on the S1 motor domain indicated that significant flexibility was present throughout the molecular model. The constrained opening versus closing of the 50 kDa cleft appeared to induce opposite directions of movement in the lever arm. A sequence called the "strut" which traverses the 50 kDa cleft and may play an important role in positioning… more
Date: August 2007
Creator: Gawalapu, Ravi Kumar
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Nucleotide Inhibition of Glyoxalase II

Description: The glyoxalase system mediates the conversion of methylglyoxal, a toxic ketoaldehyde, to D-lactic acid. The system is composed of two enzymes, glyoxalase I (Glo-I) and glyoxalase II (Glo-II), and exhibits an absolute requirement for a catalytic quantity of glutathione (GSH). Glo-I catalyzes the isomerization of a hemithioacetal, formed non-enzymatically from methylglyoxal and GSH, to the corresponding a -D-hydroxyacid thioester, s-D-lactoylglutathione (SLG). Glo-II catalyzes the irreversible br… more
Date: May 1999
Creator: Gillis, Glen S
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Partner: UNT Libraries
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Studies on actomyosin crossbridge flexibility using a new single molecule assay.

Description: Several key flexure sites exist in the muscle crossbridge including the actomyosin binding site which play important roles in the actomyosin crossbridge cycle. To distinguish between these sources of flexibility, a new single molecule assay was developed to observe the swiveling of rod about a single myosin. Myosins attached through a single crossbridge displayed mostly similar torsional characteristics compared to myosins attached through two crossbridges, which indicates that most of the tors… more
Date: May 2004
Creator: Gundapaneni, Deepika
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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The Relationship of Force on Myosin Subfragment 2 Region to the Coiled-Coiled Region of the Myosin Dimer

Description: The stability of myosin subfragment 2 was analyzed using gravitational force spectroscopy. The region was found to destabilize under physiological force loads, indicating the possibility that subfragment 2 may uncoil to facilitate actin binding during muscle contraction. As a control, synthetic cofilaments were produced to discover if the observations in the single molecule assay were due to the lack of the stability provided by the thick filament. Statistically, there was no difference betwee… more
Date: December 2011
Creator: Hall, Nakiuda M.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Plastidial carbonic anhydrase in cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.): characterization, expression, and role in lipid biosynthesis

Description: Recently, plastidial carbonic anhydrase (CA, EC 4.2.1.1) cDNA clones encoding functional CA enzymes were isolated from a nonphotosynthetic cotton tissue. The role of CA in photosynthetic tissues have been well characterized, however there is almost no information for the role of CA in nonphotosynthetic tissues. A survey of relative CA transcript abundance and enzyme activity in different cotton organs revealed that there was substantial CA expression in cotyledons of seedlings and embryos, both… more
Date: August 2001
Creator: Hoang, Chau V.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Tobacco Phospholipase D β1: Molecular Cloning and Biochemical Characterization

Description: Transgenic tobacco plants were developed containing a partial PLD clone in antisense orientation. The PLD isoform targeted by the insertion was identified. A PLD clone was isolated from a cDNA library using the partial PLD as a probe: Nt10B1 shares 92% identity with PLDβ1 from tomato but lacks the C2 domain. PCR analysis confirmed insertion of the antisense fragment into the plants: three introns distinguished the endogenous gene from the transgene. PLD activity was assayed in leaf homogenates … more
Date: December 2002
Creator: Hodson, Jane E.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Development of Enabling Technologies to Visualize the Plant Lipidome

Description: Improvements in mass spectrometry (MS)-based strategies for characterizing the plant lipidome through quantitative and qualitative approaches such as shotgun lipidomics have substantially enhanced our understanding of the structural diversity and functional complexity of plant lipids. However, most of these approaches require chemical extractions that result in the loss of the original spatial context and cellular compartmentation for these compounds. To address this current limitation, severa… more
Date: August 2013
Creator: Horn, Patrick J.
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Evidence for Multiple Functions of a Medicago Truncatula Transporter

Description: Legumes play an important role in agriculture as major food sources for humans and as feed for animals. Bioavailable nitrogen is a limiting nutrient for crop growth. Legumes are important because they can form a symbiotic relationship with soil bacteria called rhizobia that results in nitrogen-fixing root nodules. In this symbiosis, rhizobia provide nitrogen to the legumes and the legumes provide carbon sources to the rhizobia. The Medicago truncatula NPF1.7/NIP/LATD gene is essential for root … more
Date: December 2014
Creator: Huang, Ying-Sheng
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Palmitoyl-acyl Carrier Protein Thioesterase in Cotton (Gossypium hirsutum L.): Biochemical and Molecular Characterization of a Major Mechanism for the Regulation of Palmitic Acid Content

Description: The relatively high level of palmitic acid (22 mol%) in cottonseeds may be due in part to the activity of a palmitoyl-acyl carrier protein (ACP) thioesterase (PATE). In embryo extracts, PATE activity was highest at the maximum rate of reserve accumulation (oil and protein). The cotton FatB mRNA transcript abundance also peaked during this developmental stage, paralleling the profiles of PATE enzyme activity and seed oil accumulation. A cotton FatB cDNA clone was isolated by screening a cDNA lib… more
Date: August 2001
Creator: Huynh, Tu T
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Manipulations of Sucrose/Proton Symporters and Proton-pumping Pyrophosphatase Lead to Enhanced Phloem Transport But Have Contrasting Effects on Plant Biomass

Description: Delivery of photoassimilate, mainly sucrose (Suc) from photoautotrophic source leaves provides the substrate for the growth and maintenance of sink tissues such as roots, storage tissues, flowers and fruits, juvenile organs, and seeds. Phloem loading is the energized process of accumulating solute in the sieve element/companion cell complex of source leaf phloem to generate the hydrostatic pressure that drives long-distance transport. In many plants this is catalyzed by Suc/Proton (H+) symporte… more
Date: May 2015
Creator: Khadilkar, Aswad S
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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Functional Characterization of Plant Fatty Acid Amide Hydrolases

Description: Fatty acid amide hydrolase (FAAH) terminates the endocannabinoid signaling pathway that regulates numerous neurobehavioral processes in animals by hydrolyzing a class of lipid mediators, N-acylethanolamines (NAEs). Recent identification of an Arabidopsis FAAH homologue (AtFAAH) and several studies, especially those using AtFAAH overexpressing and knock-out lines suggest that a FAAH-mediated pathway exists in plants for the metabolism of endogenous NAEs. Here, I provide evidence to support this … more
Date: December 2010
Creator: Kim, Sang-Chul
Item Type: Refine your search to only Thesis or Dissertation
Partner: UNT Libraries
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