Matching Items (68)
ContributorsHott, Sydney (Author) / Carrasco, Clare (Thesis director) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / Espaillat Lizardo, Mónica (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics (Contributor) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Sch (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor)
Created2024-05
Description
Coccidioidomycosis (valley fever) is caused by inhalation of arthrospores from soil-dwelling fungi, Coccidioides immitis and C. posadasii. This dimorphic fungus and disease are endemic to the southwestern United States, central valley in California and Mexico. The Genome of Coccidioidies has been sequenced but proteomic studies are absent. To address this gap in knowledge, we generated proteome of Spherulin (lysate of Spherule phase) using LC-MS/MS and identified over 1300 proteins. We also investigated lectin reactivity to spherules in human lung tissue based on the hypothesis that coccidioidal glycosylation is different from mammalian glycosylation, and therefore certain lectins would have differential binding properties to fungal glycoproteins. Lectin-based immunohistochemistry using formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded human lung tissue from human coccidioidomycosis patients demonstrated that Griffonia simplificonia lectin II (GSL II) and succinylated wheat germ agglutinin (sWGA) bound specifically to endospores and spherules in infected lungs, but not to adjacent human tissue. GSL II and sWGA-lectin affinity chromatography using Spherulin, followed by LC-MS/MS was used to isolate and identify 195 proteins that bind to GSL-II lectin and 224 proteins that bind to sWGA lectin. This is the first report that GSL II and sWGA lectins bind specifically to Coccidioides endospores and spherules in infected human tissues. Our list of proteins from spherulin (whole and GSL-II and sWGA binding fraction) may also serve as a Coccidioidal Rosetta-Stone generated from mass spectra to identify proteins from 3 different databases: The Broad Institutes Coccidioides Genomes project, RefSeq and SwissProt. This also serves as a viable avenue for proteomics based diagnostic test development for valley fever. Using lectin chromatography and LC MS/MS, we identified over 100 proteins in plasma of two patients and six proteins in urine of one patient. We also identified over eighty fungal proteins isolated from spherules from biopsied infected lung tissue. This, to the best of our knowledge, is the first such example of detecting coccidioidal proteins in patient blood and urine and provides a foundation for development of a proteomics based diagnostic test as opposed to presently available but unreliable serologic diagnostic tests reliant on an antibody response in the host.
ContributorsKaushal, Setu (Author) / Lake, Douglas (Thesis advisor) / Magee, Dewey Mitchell (Committee member) / Chandler, Douglas (Committee member) / Rawls, Jeffery (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
Macrophage fusion resulting multinucleated giant cells (MGCs) formation is associated with numerous chronic inflammatory diseases including the foreign body reaction to implanted
biomaterials. Despite long-standing predictions, there have been attempts to use live-cell
imaging to investigate the morphological features initiating macrophage fusion because
macrophages do not fuse on clean glass required for most imaging techniques. Consequently,
the mechanisms of macrophage fusion remain poorly understood. The goal of this research
project was to characterize the early and late stages of macrophage multinucleation using
fusogenic optical quality substrate. Live-cell imaging with phase-contrast and lattice-light
sheet microscopy revealed that an actin-based protrusion initiates macrophage fusion. WASpdeficient macrophages and macrophages isolated from myeloid cell-specific Cdc42-/- mice
fused at very low rates. In addition, inhibiting the Arp2/3 complex impaired both the formation
of podosomes and macrophage fusion.
Analyses of the late stages of macrophage multinucleation on biomaterials implanted into
mice revealed novel actin-based zipper-like structures (ZLSs) formed at contact sites between
MGCs. The model system that was developed for the induction of ZLSs in vitro allowed for
the characterization of protein composition using confocal and super-resolution microscopy.
Live-cell imaging demonstrated that ZLSs are dynamic formations undergoing continuous
assembly and disassembly and that podosomes are precursors of these structures. It was further
found that E-cadherin and nectin-2 are involved in ZLS formation by bridging the plasma
membranes together. ii
Macrophage fusion on implanted biomaterials inherently involves their adhesion to the
implant surface. While biomaterials rapidly acquire a layer of host proteins, a biological
substrate that is required for macrophage fusion is unknown. It was shown that mice with
fibrinogen deficiency as well as mice expressing fibrinogen incapable of fibrin polymerization
displayed a dramatic reduction of macrophage fusion on biomaterials. Furthermore, these mice
were protected from the formation of the dense collagenous capsule enveloping the implant. It
was also found that the main cell type responsible for the deposition of collagen in the capsule
were mononuclear macrophages but not myofibroblasts. Together, these findings reveal a
critical role of the actin cytoskeleton in macrophage fusion and identify potential targets to
reduce the drawbacks of macrophage fusion on implanted biomaterials.
ContributorsBalabiyev, Arnat (Author) / Ugarova, Tatiana (Thesis advisor) / Roberson, Robert (Committee member) / Chandler, Douglas (Committee member) / Baluch, Page (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2021
Description
This research investigates what aspects of certain college students' quarantine experience were contributing to specific changes in gender identity. For this project, a general survey was distributed, and multiple interviews were conducted with willing survey participants to gauge more in-depth information about this phenomenon. Through the survey portion of the research, I found that many Barrett students felt that their identity had changed over the course of the pandemic, and a unique subset of these students experienced a change in their gender identity. Interviews with these folks highlighted several mechanisms that fostered this phenomenon: first, that quarantine allowed them a time to introspect, second, that they were not being policed or scrutinized in public for their gender performance, and third, that this was taking place in a supportive physical and/or virtual environment. This new research provides insight into the specific experiences of nonbinary college students whose identity shifted over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring factors that can influence identity development. While this is a unique and niche situation, it illustrates changing trends in how younger generations view themselves and their gender identity.
ContributorsNorthrop, Kay (Author) / Graff, Sarah (Thesis director) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Department of Psychology (Contributor) / Department of Information Systems (Contributor)
Created2021-12
Description
This analysis aimed to understand how and why certain representations of fraternity and sorority life are consistently used in media texts. Throughout this thesis I analyzed various media including films, a television series, a documentary, and coverage of a news story and found that fraternity and sorority representations reinforce different social issues. Additionally, this thesis discusses how fraternities and sororities are framed in the media texts as institutions which force members to abide by larger societal norms and gender roles. Stigmas and social issues surrounding fraternity and sorority life including hazing, violence, and toxic masculinity, femininity and feminism, diversity and racism, and partying, power and misogyny are the focus of many of the media used in this study. This thesis analyzed how media use these topics to generalize representations of fraternity and sorority life members and to perpetuate normalized gender roles and dominant narratives about race and sexuality.
ContributorsLockhart, Christine (Author) / Himberg, Julia (Thesis director) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor) / Department of Marketing (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
With the increase in women’s professional sports teams and the burst in female sport participation since Title IX, we might expect increased media attention on women’s sports. However, female athletes’ journey for equality is still a work in progress. Women in sports are underrepresented in the volume and type of sports coverage they receive. They are generally represented in media forms, such as magazines and advertising, that focus on their bodies as sexual objects rather than their abilities as athletes. This paper will explore how female athletes are portrayed not only less and in less athletic contexts than male athletes, but also in ways that support the patriarchal dominance that is prevalent in American sports. By examining print media, advertising, televised sports coverage and social media, this paper demonstrates the system of male hegemony that underlies American sports.
ContributorsEvans, Rebekah (Author) / Barca, Lisa (Thesis director) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Committee member) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
A posthuman figure like the female cyborg challenges traditional humanist feminism in ways that make room for theorizing new subjectivities and feminist epistemologies. Rather than support a traditional feminism that assumes common experiences within patriarchal society and erases differences among women, cyborg feminism moves beyond naturalism and essentialism to acknowledge complex, individual, and ever-changing identity. Three films, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015), all offer such a vision of the female cyborg. In these films, the cyborg subject is a composite of machine and human—sometimes physical, dependent on the corporal mixing of flesh and machine, but just as often mental. Human sentiment, human memories, and human emotion merge with mechanical frames and electronic codes/coding to produce cyborgs. Importantly, every main cyborg in these films is coded as female. For each cyborg, a female body hosts preprogrammed sexuality and the emotions each creator thinks a woman should have, whether those are empathy, compassion, or submissiveness.
The cyborgs in these films, however, refuse to let categorizations like female, or even their status as human, alive, or real, restrict them so easily. As human-robot hybrids, cyborgs bridge identities that are assumed to be separate and often oppositional or mutually exclusive. Cyborgs reveal the structures and expectations reified in gender to suggest that something constructed can as easily be deconstructed. In doing so, they create loose ends that leave space for new understandings of both gender and technology. By viewing these films alongside critical theory, we can understand their cyborgs as subversive, hybrid characters. Accordingly, the cyborg as a figure subverts and fragments the coherency of narratives that present gender, technology, and identity in monolithic terms, not only helping us envision new possibilities but giving us the faculties to imagine them at all.
The cyborgs in these films, however, refuse to let categorizations like female, or even their status as human, alive, or real, restrict them so easily. As human-robot hybrids, cyborgs bridge identities that are assumed to be separate and often oppositional or mutually exclusive. Cyborgs reveal the structures and expectations reified in gender to suggest that something constructed can as easily be deconstructed. In doing so, they create loose ends that leave space for new understandings of both gender and technology. By viewing these films alongside critical theory, we can understand their cyborgs as subversive, hybrid characters. Accordingly, the cyborg as a figure subverts and fragments the coherency of narratives that present gender, technology, and identity in monolithic terms, not only helping us envision new possibilities but giving us the faculties to imagine them at all.
ContributorsMargolis, Madison Lawry (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Miller, April (Committee member) / Department of English (Contributor, Contributor) / School of Film, Dance and Theatre (Contributor) / School of International Letters and Cultures (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Adsorption of fibrinogen on various surfaces, including biomaterials, dramatically reduces the adhesion of platelets and leukocytes. The mechanism by which fibrinogen renders surfaces non-adhesive is its surface-induced self-assembly leading to the formation of a nanoscale multilayer matrix. Under the applied tensile force exerted by cellular integrins, the fibrinogen matrix extends as a result of the separation of layers which prevents the transduction of strong mechanical forces, resulting in weak intracellular signaling and feeble cell adhesion. Furthermore, upon detachment of adherent cells, a weak association between fibrinogen molecules in the superficial layers of the matrix allows integrins to pull fibrinogen molecules out of the matrix. Whether the latter mechanism contributes to the anti-adhesive mechanism under the flow is unclear. In the present study, using several experimental flow systems, it has been demonstrated that various blood cells as well as model HEK293 cells expressing the fibrinogen receptors, were able to remove fibrinogen molecules from the matrix in a time- and cell concentration-dependent manner. In contrast, insignificant fibrinogen dissociation occurred in a cell-free buffer, and crosslinking fibrinogen matrix significantly reduced cell-mediated dissociation of adsorbed fibrinogen. Surprisingly, cellular integrins contributed minimally to fibrinogen dissociation since function-blocking anti-integrin antibodies did not significantly inhibit this process. In addition, erythrocytes that are not known to express functional fibrinogen receptors and naked liposomes caused fibrinogen dissociation, suggesting that the removal of fibrinogen from the matrix may be caused by nonspecific low-affinity interactions of cells with the fibrinogen matrix. These results indicate that the peeling effect exerted by flowing cells upon their contact with the fibrinogen matrix is involved in the anti-adhesive mechanism.
ContributorsMursalimov, Aibek (Author) / Ugarova, Tatiana (Thesis advisor) / Chandler, Douglas (Committee member) / Podolnikova, Nataly (Committee member) / Ros, Robert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2022