I would like to thank my advisor, Gerard Cornuéjols, for his support and his precious guidance. I also want to express my gratitude towards Michele Conforti, who introduced me to the field of combinatorics when I has an undergraduate student in Padova, and encouraged me to continue. Several parts of this dissertation resulted from working jointly with Michele Con-forti, Gerard Cornuéjols, and K...

Both the amino-terminal and carboxyl-terminal domains of IGF binding protein (IGFBP)-3 are believed to contribute to high-affinity IGF binding. To investigate cooperativity in IGF binding by these domains, we expressed IGFBP-3 fragments 1-88 (NBP-3) and 185-264 (CBP-3) as FLAG and hexahistidine-tagged fusion proteins, respectively. IGF-I and IGF-II bound to NBP-3 poorly and to CBP-3 with modera...

The major light-harvesting chlorophyll a/b-binding protein (Lhcb1,2) of photosystem II is inserted into the thylakoid via the signal recognition particle dependent pathway. However, the mechanism by which the protein enters the membrane is at this time unknown. In order to define some topographical restrictions for this process, we constructed several recombinant derivatives of Lhcb1 carrying h...

Hairy root culture is a potential alternative to conventional mammalian cell culture to produce recombinant proteins due to its ease in protein recovery, low costs and absence of potentially human pathogenic contaminants. The current study focussed to develop a new platform of a hairy root culture system from Nicotiana tabacum for the production of recombinant human EPO (rhEPO), which is regula...

data collected confirmed the RNA-Seq results. ChIP-Seq methods are being optimized to identify the direct targets of OpaR. Select targets were confirmed direct targets via in vitro electrophoretic mobility shift assays (EMSA) with purified hexahistidine tagged OpaR. A previously published position specific weighted matrix (PSWM) will be utilized to assist in identification of possible OpaR bind...

Ischemia and reperfusion of organs is an unavoidable consequence of transplantation. Inflammatory events associated with reperfusion injury are in part attributed to excessive complement activation. Systemic administration of complement inhibitors reduces reperfusion injury but leaves patients vulnerable to infection. Here, we report a novel therapeutic strategy that decorates cells with an ant...