Matching Items (2)
Filtering by
- All Subjects: Chlamydomonas Reinhardtii
- Creators: Chakraborty, Partha
- Creators: Jones, Anne
- Creators: Sisk, Ryan Derek
- Member of: Barrett, The Honors College Thesis/Creative Project Collection
Description
There is an ever-increasing need in the world to develop a source of fuel that is clean, renewable and feasible in terms of production and implementation. Hydrogen gas presents a possible solution to these energy needs, particularly if given a way to produce hydrogen gas efficiently. Biological hydrogen (biohydrogen) production presents a potential way to do just this. It is known that hydrogenases are active in wild-type algal photosynthesis pathways but are only active in anoxic environments, where they serve as electron sinks and compete poorly for electrons from photosystem I. To circumvent these issues, a psaC-hydA1 fusion gene was designed and incorporated into a plasmid that was then used to transform hydrogenase-free Chlamydomonas reinhardtii mutants. Results obtained suggest that the psaC-hydA1 gene completely replaced the wild-type psaC gene in the chloroplast genome and the fusion was expressed in the algal cells. Western blotting verified the presence of the HydA1-PsaC fusion proteins in the transformed cells, P700 photobleaching suggested the normal assembly of FA/FB clusters in PsaC-HydA1, and PSII fluorescence data suggested that HydA1 protein limited photosynthetic electron transport flow in the fusion. Hydrogen production was measured in dark, high light, and under maximal reducing conditions. In all conditions, the wild-type algal strain (with a normal PsaC protein) exhibited higher rates of hydrogen production in the light over 2 hours than the WT strain, though both strains produced similar rates in the dark.
ContributorsSmith, Alec (Author) / Redding, Kevin (Thesis director) / Jones, Anne (Committee member) / Vermaas, Willem (Committee member) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2017-12
Description
The honors thesis presented in this document describes an extension to an electrical engineering capstone project whose scope is to develop the receiver electronics for an RF interrogator. The RF interrogator functions by detecting the change in resonant frequency of (i.e, frequency of maximum backscatter from) a target resulting from an environmental input. The general idea of this honors project was to design three frequency selective surfaces that would act as surrogate backscattering or reflecting targets that each contains a distinct frequency response. Using 3-D electromagnetic simulation software, three surrogate targets exhibiting bandpass frequency responses at distinct frequencies were designed and presented in this thesis.
ContributorsSisk, Ryan Derek (Author) / Aberle, James (Thesis director) / Chakraborty, Partha (Committee member) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05