Search

Spring 2016

Schlacht, Alexander Douglas William

One of the features that distinguishes eukaryotes from prokaryotes is the membrane trafficking system. This system underpins much of the functionality of the eukaryotic cell, and is necessary for feeding, motility and communication. Analyses aimed at addressing the evolution of this system have...

Fall 2019

Sirota, Joshua

Emergent communication is a framework for machine language acquisition that has recently been utilized to train deep neural networks to develop shared languages from scratch and use these languages to communicate and cooperate. Previous work on emergent communication has utilized gradient-based...

2013

Kommadath, A., Bao, H., Meng, Y., Plastow, G. S., Stothard, P., Sun, X., Arantes, A. S., Guan, L. L.

Background Understanding how species-specific microRNAs (miRNAs) contribute to species-specific phenotypes is a central topic in biology. This study aimed to elucidate the role of ruminant-specific miRNAs in shaping mRNA expression divergence between ruminant and non-ruminant species. ...

2016-02-13

Alkhatam, Amira H.

In 21st century classrooms, labs and technology play a crucial role in understanding biological structures, functions, and processes related to human anatomy and physiology. However, the lack of scientific and technological tools in many high schools in Saudi Arabia has an adverse impact on both...

Spring 2011

Fetterman, Christina

Forkhead (Fox) proteins are transcription factors that function in many processes including development, metabolism and cell cycle regulation. This gene family is divided into subfamilies that appear to originate from a common ancestor. I have identified the evolutionary selection pressures...

2010

Leys, S.P., Goss, G.G., Adams, E.D.M.

Epithelial tissue — the sealed and polarized layer of cells that regulates transport of ions and solutes between the environment and the internal milieu — is a defining characteristic of the Eumetazoa. Sponges, the most ancient metazoan phylum [1], [2], are generally believed to lack true...

2008

Li, R., Wang, J., Wong, G.K.S., Zheng, H., Xu, S., Clark, T., Zheng, X., Vang, S.

Background Gene conversion causes a non-reciprocal transfer of genetic information between similar sequences. Gene conversion can both homogenize genes and recruit point mutations thereby shaping the evolution of multigene families. In the rice genome, the large number of duplicated genes...

Fall 2017

Mah, Jasmine L

The nervous system is present in all but two animal phyla – one of them being Porifera, sponges. Sponges have no neurons and yet have organized behavior and finely tuned sensation. Furthermore, sponges have genes involved in the nervous system of other animals (informally called ‘neural’ genes)....

Fall 2013

Gorrell, Jamie

The theory of natural selection has advanced our understanding in every aspect of biological sciences, yet despite this seeming ubiquity, there remain some components that are not fully resolved. Natural selection predicts the “selfish” advancement of genes that are optimally suited for their...

2006

Wang, W., Li, J., Liu, D., Lu, Z., Zheng, H., Wong, G., Cai, Z., Fan, C., Zhang, J., Vang, S., Long, M., Zhang, G., Wang, J., Shi, J.

Retroposition is widely found to play essential roles in origination of new mammalian and other animal genes. However, the scarcity of retrogenes in plants has led to the assumption that plant genomes rarely evolve new gene duplicates by retroposition, despite abundant retrotransposons in plants...