Now showing items 131-140 of 147
The Physiological and Behavioral Roles of Cholinergic and GABAergic Signaling to Drosophila Circadian Clock Neurons
(2019)
Circadian clocks allow organisms to track and anticipate rhythms in time-giving environmental cues (Zeitgebers) caused by Earth’s 24-hour rotation. In many organisms, master neuronal clocks are essential to synchronize ...
The Intersection of Early Life Experiences and Serotonergic Gene Expression on Behavior and Physiology.
(2013)
Adverse early life experiences (aELEs), such as childhood abuse, neglect, or trauma, increase lifetime vulnerability for mental illness. Interactions between aELEs and polymorphisms in serotonergic (5-HT) genes can further ...
Molecular Mechanisms of Subcellular Development: Down Syndrome-Related Genetic Interactions and Axon-Dendrite Coordination During Neurodevelopment
(2022)
Mechanisms of dendrite and axon patterning are important in both neurotypical development and neurodevelopmental disorders. This dissertation aimed to address two open questions concerning mechanisms of subcellular ...
Neuronal Activity-Dependent Development of the Nociceptive Circuit in Drosophila
(2018)
How nature and nurture interact to sculpt the nervous system, which underlies animal behaviors, has fascinated both scientists and the general public for generations. At the level of neural circuit assembly, the answer ...
Delineating the Specificity of Cannabinoid Effects by Investigating Cannabinoid Receptor-1 Trafficking and Signaling
(2022)
Pharmaceuticals target specific proteins within the body to produce desired therapeutic outcomes, and the G-protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) family represents the most common type of pharmaceutical target. Traditional models ...
The Road to Identifying Disease Causing Genes: Association Tests, Genotype Imputations, and Sampling Strategies for Sequencing Studies.
(2013)
Technological advances now allow investigators to use sequencing data to identify genetic risk variants for complex diseases. However, it is still expensive to sequence a large sample of individuals. While genotype imputation ...
Interactions between Hebbian and Homeostatic Synaptic Plasticity in Hippocampal Circuits.
(2014)
Hebbian forms of synaptic plasticity, including long-term potentiation (LTP) and long-term depression (LTD), are thought to underlie learning and memory, but these processes may have a destabilizing effect on neural activity. ...
Membrane Trafficking and Signaling of the Delta Opioid Receptor Within the Biosynthetic Pathway
(2022)
G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) transduce diverse signals, including light, ions, hormones, and neurotransmitters, into equally diverse cellular responses. These cellular responses underlie complex physiological ...
Molecular Basis of Inhibitory Modulation of P2X2 Receptors by Zinc and Copper.
(2012)
P2X receptors are ion channels gated by ATP and modulated by the trace metals zinc and copper. Rat P2X2 (rP2X2) receptors show potentiation in the presence of a submaximal concentration of ATP but are inhibited by zinc at ...
Novel Mechanisms that Antagonize Hedgehog Signaling at the Cell Surface During Vertebrate Embryogenesis
(2017)
Hedgehog (HH) signaling is a conserved mode of cell-cell communication that is indispensible for embryogenesis. HH proteins are secreted ligands that travel over long distances within a developing tissue to induce distinct ...