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Fall 2020

Fu, Zelin

Prion diseases are neurodegenerative diseases that are caused by the misfolding and aggregation of cellular prion protein (PrPC) into the pathogenic form termed PrPSc. To contribute to a better understanding of the mechanism of prion disease, in this thesis I present my work on the structural...

Fall 2020

Wang, Qian

Cellular responses to stress are an integral part of cardiovascular physiology and pathology, and endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress is the key component in the development and progression of various heart diseases. However, the relative contribution of ER stress pathways to muscle damage and...

Spring 2020

Yang, Zelei

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) infects 40–70% of the adult population in developed countries, and this rate increases with age. HCMV infection is normally latent with no noticeable symptoms in individuals with a healthy immune system. However, the infection can cause problems in immune-compromised...

Fall 2020

Eskandari-Sedighi, Ghazaleh

Neurodegenerative diseases are a rising concern worldwide. Currently 10% of people aged 65 or more are diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disease and this number is predicted to triplicate by 2050. In developed societies approximately one percent of the global gross domestic product is allocated...

Fall 2019

Mann, Jasdeep

Breast cancer is the leading cause of death among women worldwide. Fortunately, death rates have been declining since 1990, due to the increase in early detection, testing, and improved treatment. However, despite the advancement of targeted and hormone therapies for certain molecular sub-types...

Spring 2019

Wan, Sereana

PEMT is quantitatively important in the liver and is responsible for approximately 30% of hepatic PC synthesis, with the remaining 70% synthesized by the CDP-choline pathway. HFD-fed Pemt-/- mice and LPcyt1a-/- mice both develop NAFLD associated with reduced VLDL secretion and a reduced hepatic...

Spring 2019

Garside, Erin

Exons, protein coding regions in eukaryotic genes, are interrupted by non-coding introns that must be removed from transcribed pre-mRNA prior to translation into protein. Introns are removed, and exons ligated, in a process called pre-mRNA splicing. Conserved sites within the intron, the 5′ and...

Fall 2019

Acevedo Morantes, Claudia Y

Human prion diseases present as sporadic, familial, infectious, or iatrogenic forms. They include diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome (GSS), and Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI). The wide range of phenotypic variation in human prion diseases is...

Fall 2019

Malhotra, Darpan

Endothelial Corneal Dystrophies (ECD), genetic blinding diseases with a heterogeneous pathophysiology, are the leading cause of endothelial keratopathy (corneal transplants). Patients manifest symptoms, including corneal edema with increased corneal thickness and loss of corneal endothelial cells...

Fall 2018

Wang, Wen-An Jennifer

Calreticulin is an endoplasmic reticulum (ER) protein chaperone and calcium (Ca2+) binding protein and is therefore important for maintaining ER homeostasis. Calreticulin deficiency is embryonic lethal in mice due to inadequate inositol trisphosphate receptor (InsP3R)-mediated Ca2+ signaling and...