Library: Biological Sciences

Growth Associated Protein 43 (GAP-43), isolated from rat brain and considered a neuronal marker, is involved in neurite branching, cytoskeleton remodelling, neuronal development and protection. However, GAP-43 mRNA was found in embryonic chicken cells positive to meromyosin, as well as in human satellite cells, myoblasts and myotubes deriving from healthy or dystrophic muscles. Despite these findings, there is no clear evidence about its localization or relationship with other muscle proteins. The aim of this study was to investigate GAP-43 protein expression and localization in C2C12 cells a...

Septoria leaf blotch has been the major disease of wheat in Britain and much of the rest of Europe. It has been reported that the disease causes serious yield losses to range from 31 to 53%. Mycosphaerella graminicola (anamorph: Septoria tritici) is the pathogen which causes Septoria leaf blotch. The disease can be controlled by various methods such as cultural practices, chemical control, using resistant varieties and biological control. In plant pathology, the term biological control leads to the introduction of microbial antagonists or host specific pathogens to suppress diseases and popula...

Fungal spoilage during the storage of fresh produce is a major concern in the food industry. Several methods have been used in order to improve and increase the shelf-life of food such as pesticide treatment, but the safety issues and concerns about these methods has been questioned due to their observed ill effects on consumer health and environment. Thus, it leads to emergence of a novel alternative residue free treatment. Ozone is known to be a powerful oxidising agent having the ability to break down into harmless oxygen and interestingly leaves no residue. The potential of ozone to reduce...

Staphylococcus epidermidis is the leading cause of hospital-acquired infections associated with implanted medical devices. Likewise, Proteus mirabilis is one of the leading causes of nosocomial Urinary Tract Infections (UTIs) and is associated with urinary catheter blockage. Both organisms produce biofilms, which make them less susceptible to antibiotics. Therefore, these infections are often notoriously difficult to treat and in many cases lead to complications. Preventing biofilm formation or killing a pre-existing biofilm would be useful solutions since biofilm formation is a phenomenon com...

This research reconceptualizes or elaborates on, or even modifies, the systemic approach of community attachment by looking at its concepts from a structural symbolic interactionist approach. The systemic model conceptualizes community attachment as three forms of community solidarity--strong interpersonal relations among community residents, strong sentiments about the community, and involvement in community affairs. The structural symbolic interactionist approach assumes that farmers' role choices--involvement in community affairs--depends on their resident-identities. T...

This thesis is divided into 4 chapters summarizing this contribution on selected topics related to chlorophyll biosynthesis and biogenesis of the photosynthetic apparatus. The first chapter deals with the state of Pchlide in nonilluminated leaves. The comparison of the photoactive Pchlide absorbance spectra throughout the development in the dark, reveals that the proportion of P638-645 and P650-657 is not much modified during this period. The Gaussian deconvolutions of 77 K fluorescence spectra of nonphotoactive and photoactive Pchlide indicated the presence of three and 5 spectral forms, res...

William James and John Dewey insisted that pragmatic philosophy finds meaning in its struggle to deal with emergent social problems. Ironically, few have attempted to use pragmatism to articulate methods for ameliorating social difficulties. This dissertation attempts to do just that by putting James' and Dewey's philosophy to work on the moral and scientific problems associated with genetic engineering and the Human Genome Project. The intention is to demonstrate the usefulness of a pragmatic approach to applied ethics and philosophy of biology. The work of proponents and critics of genet...

Les relations gënomiques dëgagëes dans ce travail font apparaÓtre que l'anctre commun des graminëes a subi une transition de la composition en bases qui se traduit par l'augmentation en GC dans tous les consitutants gëniques et gënomiques. Par opposition, cette transition n'a pas eu lieu dans la plupart des autres Monocots et Dicots. La transition compositionnelle renforce l'ëvidence de l'existence de deux classes de gnes chez les Angiospermes : les gnes pauvres et riches en GC. Les premiers sont caractërisës par la prësence d'introns en plus grand nombre et de plus grande longueur que les ...

The transition from locally-produced, whole foods to distant-produced, fractioned foods marks food consumption patterns in the United States and other developed nations. Chief risk factors for prostate cancer - milk, meat and vegetable oils – were examined to determine how modern processing of these foods has impacted the incidence of prostate cancer. Food consumption patterns in six nations with consistently low prostate cancer mortality were compared with seven nations with consistently high cancer mortality. Several of the low prostate cancer mortality nations included in this study h...

The Pax gene family appears to have evolved by a combination of gene duplication and / or genome duplication events over a long period of evolutionary time. The highly conserved paired box sequence within the Pax genes encodes a paired DNA binding domain, indicating that the Pax proteins are transcription factors which bind and regulate downstream target genes. Nine Pax genes (Pax1 - Pax9) listed in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) database, contain this motif. Some members of the Pax family, which includes Pax3 and Pax7, encode a second DNA binding domain of the paire...