Meiosis is a highly regulated process necessary for proper chromosome division. Zincfluxes regulate mammalian meiosis; between prophase I and metaphase II, total intracellular zinc
increases by 50%, while 20% of zinc is released in “zinc sparks” following fertilization. Although
zinc fluxes had been shown to be conserved in mammals, it...
Melanin is a functional biopolymer most commonly associated with human skin pigmentation, where it serves as a radiation protection agent, shielding us from the harmful effects of UV radiation. However, melanin is also present in human ears, eyes, hair, and brains, serving a variety of functions. In fact, melanin...
Natural products from fungi have had an immeasurable societal impact as both friends and foes to human health. This includes numerous therapeutics that have had widespread clinical success, mycotoxins that are implicated in fungal pathogenicity, and various agrochemicals. Recent genome sequencing efforts have revealed that fungal genomes contain the capacity...
The opposing activities of phosphatases and kinases determine the phosphorylation status of proteins, yet kinases have received disproportionate attention in studies of cellular processes, with the roles of phosphatases remaining less understood. This dissertation describes the use of self-assembled monolayer laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (SAMDI-MS) together with peptide arrays to...
Pediatric high-grade gliomas (pHGGs) are aggressive pediatric CNS tumors and an important subset are characterized by mutations in H3F3A, the gene that encodes Histone H3.3 (H3.3). Substitution of Glycine at position 34 of H3.3 with either Arginine or Valine (H3.3G34R/V), was recently described and characterized in a large cohort...
More than half of proteins in humans are modified with carbohydrates in a process called glycosylation, yet this process remains poorly understood even though approximately 1% of the expressed human genome encodes biosynthetic machinery for glycosylation. Unlike genomics and proteomics where high throughput tools are now routinely used to generate...
The eukaryotic genome is packaged into chromatin. The nucleosome, the basic unit of chromatin, is composed of DNA coiled around a histone octamer. Histones are among the longest-lived protein species in mammalian cells, due to their thermodynamic stability and their associations with DNA and histone chaperones. Histone metabolism plays an...
Transcription of nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) is a hallmark of life, taking the information stored within genomic nucleic acids and converting it into a form that is useful for producing the proteins necessary for cellular and organismal function. In eukaryotes, transcription of DNA into messenger RNA (mRNA) requires the...
Although centrosomes nucleate and organize microtubules in mitotically-dividing cells, spindles in female reproductive cells (oocytes) form in their absence. In some organisms acentrosomal spindle assembly is mediated by acentriolar microtubule organizing centers (MTOCs) that are thought to functionally replace centrosomes. However, spindle assembly in human oocytes does not require MTOCs;...
The literature has established glucokinase (GCK) to be the principal hexokinase (HK) in the liver, operating as a glucose sensor to regulate glucose metabolism and lipid homeostasis. We have recently proposed Hexokinase Domain Containing-1 (HKDC1) to be a novel 5th HK with expression in the liver. Here, we reveal HKDC1...