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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Natural competence and Type VI Secretion in Vibrio cholerae
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-07-22)The waterborne bacterium Vibrio cholerae, responsible for epidemics of cholera diarrhea, associates with the human gut and with chitinous surfaces in aquatic reservoirs. Prior studies of two clinical V. cholerae isolates ... -
TRANSLATIONAL BIOINFORMATICS FOR PERSONALIZED MEDICINE AND INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY: Data Integration, Extraction, Knowledge Discovery, and Visualization
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-10-13)This thesis focuses on developing a computational framework to support the Precision Medicine Initiative. The newly developed tools and algorithms use machine learning, text mining and visualization techniques for extracting ... -
Functional significance of sequence variation among miR-200/205 families of miRNAs in ovarian cancer
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-07-10)MicroRNAs are short non-coding RNAs that regulate large suites of target genes. A family of miRNAs known as the miR-200 is implicated in the epithelial-mesenchymal/ mesenchymal-epithelial transition (EMT/MET), a process ... -
Microbes in the atmosphere: prevalence, species composition, and relevance to cloud formatio
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-07-14)The composition and prevalence of microorganisms in the upper troposphere and their role in aerosol-cloud-precipitation interactions represent important, unresolved questions for biological and atmospheric sciences. Most ... -
Functional Analysis Of The Inhibition Of Topoisomerase II Alpha By Linker Histone H1
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-07-02)In higher eukaryotes, DNA is progressively packaged into chromatin. In these varying levels of compaction, linker histone H1 is a key player for mediating chromatin folding. As a result, linker histone H1 is involved in ... -
Improving algorithms of gene prediction in prokaryotic genomes, metagenomes, and eukaryotic transcriptomes
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-04-04)Next-generation sequencing has generated enormous amount of DNA and RNA sequences that potentially carry volumes of genetic information, e.g. protein-coding genes. The thesis is divided into three main parts describing i) ... -
Epigenetics in social insects
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2016-01-14)Virtually all multicellular organisms are capable of developing differently in response to environmental variation. At the molecular level, such developmental plasticity requires interpretation and perpetuation of ... -
The assembly of protist communities: Understanding drivers of historical contingency and causes and consequences of biodiversity
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-04-06)Understanding mechanisms regulating the assembly of ecological communities is a major goal of community ecology. I combined experimental and theoretical approaches to investigate the influences of various ecological factors ... -
Bacterial iron and manganese reduction driven by organic sulfur electron shuttles
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-04-08)Dissimilatory metal-reducing bacteria (DMRB) play an important role in the biogeochemical cycling of metals. DMRB are unique in that they possess the ability to couple metal reduction with their metabolism. Microbial ... -
Role of linker histone H1 in epigenetic regulation of pluripotency genes and Hox genes
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-04-04)Linker histone H1 plays a key role in facilitating folding of higher order chromatin structure. Previous studies have shown that deletion of three somatic H1 subtypes together leads to embryonic lethality and that H1c/H1d/H1e ... -
From rivers to natural gas: The influence of allochthonous inputs on marine nitrogen fixation and the carbon cycle
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-12-04)The Western Tropical North Atlantic (WTNA) was once thought to be a net source of carbon dioxide (CO₂) to the atmosphere, but recent studies have shown that this Amazon River influenced region may actually act as a net ... -
Sustainable tilapia feed derived from urban food waste
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-12-08)Finding an alternative to fishmeal and fish oil in animal feeds has been a topic of increasing interest due to the pressures being put on the ocean’s fisheries and the increasing world demand for animal protein. An ... -
Computational tools for the analysis of biological networks in plants
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2015-08-20)This thesis presents research associated to phenotyping of plants by applying informatics techniques which includes databases, web technologies, image processing and feature measurements of 2D and 3D images. The thesis ... -
Transcriptomics of malaria host-pathogen interactions in primates
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-08-21)Malaria is a pernicious disease that has greatly impacted and continues to affect the human population. While much research has been performed to understand the underlying nature of this disease, gaps in the knowledge-base ... -
Computational analysis of gene expression in complex disease
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-08-21)Cardiovascular disease (CVD) causes 45% of on-duty firefighter fatalities, a high fraction even when compared to the risk of CVD found in other first-responder professions like police work and emergency medical services. ... -
Detection and characterization of gene-fusions in breast and ovarian cancer using high-throughput sequencing
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-06-26)Gene-fusions are a prevalent class of genetic variants that are often employed as cancer biomarkers and therapeutic targets. In recent years, high-throughput sequencing of the cellular genome and transcriptome have emerged ... -
Experimental studies of the causes and consequences of biodiversity over ecological and evolutionary timescales
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-06-17)This dissertation presents four microbial microcosm-based experimental studies addressing questions related to the causes and consequences of biodiversity. All four studies adopted an approach that integrates ecology and ... -
Understanding the relation between RNase H and retrotransposition activity in the context of the Aicardi-Goutieres syndrome
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-05-19)Ribonucleases (RNases) H1 and H2 are endonucleases that hydrolyze the RNA strand of RNA-DNA hybrids forming at the chromosomal level as well as extra-chromosomal hybrids. Extra-chromosomal RNA-DNA hybrids can frequently ... -
Two-dimensional crystallization of archaeal signal peptide peptidases for structural studies by electron crystrallography
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-04-25)The membrane proteins signal peptide peptidase, signal peptide peptidase like and presenilin are intramembrane aspartyl proteases located in the endoplasmic reticulum, plasma membrane and organelle. These membrane proteins ... -
The role of H1 linker histone variants in ovarian cancer
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2013-06-27)Linker histone H1 associates with nucleosomes, facilitating folding and packaging of DNA into higher order chromatin structure. With 11 variants in mammals, histone H1 is the most divergent histone class. Histone H1 ...
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