Tissue engineering offers a promising approach for the replacement of diseased or injured tissues, and is based upon the premise that cells can be induced to form new tissues when presented with the appropriate set of environmental cues. Polymer scaffolds play a central role in most tissue engineering strategies by...
The world's aquatic food webs are currently in crisis due to the cumulative, interacting effects of anthropogenic pressures including non-indigenous species invasions, chemical contamination, overfishing, habitat disruption and global climate change. Efforts to restore or protect the integrity and sustainability of these systems are limited by a lack of knowledge...
Granular matter and living cells represent two extremes of what have come to be regarded as complex systems - systems characterized by a richness in global behavior that is not easily deduced from the interactions of their individual parts, even when those interactions are simple and well understood. On the...
Megakaryocytic cells (Mks) are derived from hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) and give rise to platelets. Ex vivo culture of HSCs under conditions that promote Mk differentiation has been proposed as a method for producing Mks and platelets for cell therapies. Mk maturation involves the development of polyploid cells via endomitosis,...
Little is known about the transcriptional events underlying megakaryocytic (Mk) differentiation from hematopoietic stem cells. We sought to identify genes and pathways not previously associated with megakaryopoiesis and to evaluate the CHRF-288-11 (CHRF) megakaryoblastic cell line as a model system for investigating megakaryopoiesis.
Using DNA microarrays, Q-RT-PCR, and protein-level assays,...
Growing concerns associated with global warming and the depletion of oil reserves have motivated significant research in support of sustainable polymers systems. In this thesis, biobased and biodegradable polymer blends and nanocomposites were created using a novel processing method, solid-state shear pulverization (SSSP). This process utilizes a modified twin-screw extruder...
The adoption of surfactant replacement therapy (SRT) for the treatment of neonatal respiratory distress syndrome (nRDS) is one of the main contributors to the dramatic decline in infant mortality rates observed in the 1980s. Despite the significant efficacy of animal-derived surfactant preparations, there are still some concerns associated with their...
To increase the butanol titers and selectivity in <em>Clostridium acetobutylicum</em> we replaced the promoter of the alcohol/aldehyde dehydrogenase (<em>aad</em>) gene with the phosphotranbutyrylase (<em>ptb</em>) promoter and combined this with CoAT downregulation to minimize acetone production. This led to early production of high alcohol (butanol plus ethanol) titers and overall solvent...
Granular materials exhibit a wide variety of fascinating physical properties that can be observed both in nature and industry. The goal of this work is to better understand the flow, mixing, and segregation of granular materials in a prototypical system, the rotating tumbler, using numerical modeling, specifically, the Discrete Element...
Nature has been evolving innovative solutions to complex design challenges for billions of years, the success of which is evidenced by the myriad of life-sustaining systems that operate with unparalleled simplicity, efficiency, and durability. Biomimetic researchers derive inspiration from principles underlying natural phenomena to solve design challenges. This work is...