School of Biology Theses and Dissertations
Original work in partial fulfillment of a graduate degree in the School of Biology
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Recent Submissions
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Probing pseudomonas aeruginosa physiology during infection using –omics techniques, phenotypic assays and mouse models
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-07-22)The opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa causes severe disease in people with compromised immune systems or co-morbidities such as diabetes or cystic fibrosis. Since even intense antibiotic regimens are often ... -
Fine-mapping of human genetic regulatory variants
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-05-13)The majority of GWAS (Genome-Wide Association Study) identified common genetic variants map to regulatory regions of gene, and are likely to influence disease risk by affecting gene expression. One of the most important ... -
Analysis of the impact of a p53 mutation in a homogeneous genetic background
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-04-21)In more than 50% of cancers, p53, a tumor suppressor gene involved cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, has been seen to be heavily mutated making it an important gene to study. There are several studies on p53 and its role ... -
Climate change & the physiology, ecology, and behavior of coral reef organisms
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-03-16)The magnitude of ocean acidification (OA) and warming predicted to occur within the next century could have significant negative effects for organisms that inhabit coral reefs. Our understanding of how these stressors ... -
Efficient alignment-free software applications for next generation sequencing-based molecular epidemiology
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-01-09)Public health agencies increasingly couple next generation sequencing (NGS) characterization of microbial genomes with bioinformatics analysis methods for molecular epidemiology. The overhead associated with the bioinformatics ... -
Evolutionary benefits of latency in within-host HIV infection dynamics
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-04-30)HIV is a retrovirus that infects helper T cells (CD4 + T cells) in the human immune system. At the cellular scale, HIV generates both actively and latently infected cells. Ac- tively infected cells produce mature virions ... -
Analysis of the role of miRNAs in ovarian cancer metastasis
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-03-27)Cancer mortality is primarily due to metastasis. Metastasis is a complex multi-step process involving, on the molecular level, regulatory control of two key development pathways: epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) ... -
Integrative immunotranscriptomic analysis of long-lived plasma cells
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-05-21)Long-lived plasma cells are a key component of serological memory encoded by the adaptive immune response. To date, prior studies of these cell types have largely assessed plasma cells as one homogenous population. The Lee ... -
Human genetic ancestry, health, and adaptation in Latin America
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-11-05)Genetic admixture is the process that occurs when populations that were previously reproductively isolated, and consequently genetically diverged, come back together and exchange genes. Recent studies of modern and ancient ... -
Global dysregulation of gene expression and tumorigenesis: Data science for cancer
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-09-03)Dysregulation of gene expression is a hallmark of cancer. Broadly speaking, my research is focused on the changes in gene expression that characterize the transition from normal to cancerous states, i.e. tumorigenesis. To ... -
Exploring the ecological and evolutionary consequences of clonal and aggregative development during the transition to multicellularity
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-09-03)Multicellular organisms form groups in one of two basic ways: cells can ‘stay together’ due to incomplete separation following cellular division (clonal development), or cells can ‘come together’ via aggregation (aggregative ... -
Genetic epidemiology algorithms for tracking drug resistance variants and genomic clustering of plasmodium species
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-09-03)The goal of this thesis is to develop algorithms for the analysis of P. falciparum, P. brasilianum, and P. malariae. Malaria is endemic in many parts of the world, including regions of central Africa, South America, and ... -
Densely packed yeast: A tool to study evolution of group dynamics and to enhance biomanufacturing
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-08-19)Yeast can thrive in dense assemblages of its own, or our making, resulting in patterns of behavior that differ markedly from that of single planktonic cells. We first studied unicellular yeast that create their own assemblage ... -
Integrating traditional microbiology with cutting-edge (meta-)genomics to advance pathogen detection and to elucidate microbiome signatures of infection
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-11-08)Microbes play a central role in human health. Through normal everyday activities, the human body is exposed to countless microorganisms from the environment in addition to the hundreds of species that colonize the human ... -
Understanding virus-host interactions through single cell and whole genome analysis
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-11-07)Viruses and their microbial hosts are widely distributed in the environment, including in oceans, soils, fresh water, and even in extreme environments such as the deep ocean, hot springs and the upper atmosphere. Given the ... -
From genomes to metagenomes: Big data analysis of microbes related to public health
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-11-07)Bacterial infections represent a major public health concern mainly in young children in the developing world and in immunocompromised individuals. Despite recent developments in clinical microbiology, our understanding ... -
Characterization of ribonucleotides embedded in DNA
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018-11-05)Ribonucleotides (rNMPs) are the most abundant non-standard nucleotides in genomic DNA. Presence of rNMPs embedded in DNA alters the DNA structure, function and their properties, which ultimately may lead to genomic instability ... -
Molecular analyses of avian sex chromosomes and sex chromosome-like autosomes
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-07-26)Sex chromosomes have originated multiple times throughout eukaryotes. In species with the XY sex-determination system, dosage compensation (a process that balances expression of sex-linked genes between sexes) is often ... -
Microbiome variation in wild versus captive spotted eagle ryas (Aetobatus narinari)
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-07-30)The microbial communities (microbiomes) associated with elasmobranchs are currently not well-understood. The spotted eagle ray (Aetobatus narinari) is a slow-maturing ray that is globally distributed in tropical and ... -
Iron as an integral constituent of ancient metabolism and biochemistry
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-05-21)Life on Earth evolved and proliferated for nearly 2 billion years in an environment devoid of molecular oxygen and replete with iron. Currently on Earth, iron has widespread uses in the biochemistry and metabolism of extant ...
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