40 results match your criteria: "Cox Science Center[Affiliation]"

In this report, we propose a novel technique for identifying and analyzing diverse nanoscale carbon allotropes using scanning electron micrographs. By precisely controlling the quenching rates of undercooled molten carbon through laser irradiation, we achieved the formation of microdiamonds, nanodiamonds, and Q-carbon films. However, standard laser irradiation without proper undercooling control leads to the formation of sparsely located diverse carbon polymorphs, hindering their discovery and classification through manual analyses.

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A new species of Glossocephalus, G. aurantium sp. nov.

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Reawakening GDNF's regenerative past in mice and humans.

Regen Ther

June 2022

University of Miami, Biology Department, 1301 Memorial Drive, Cox Science Center, Coral Gables, FL, USA.

The ability of an animal to regenerate lost tissue and body parts has obviously life-saving implications. Understanding how this ability became restricted or active in specific animal lineages will help us understand our own regeneration. According to phylogenic analysis, the glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) signaling pathway, but not other family members, is conserved in axolotls, a salamander with remarkable regenerative capacity.

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The confinement of π-conjugated chromophores on silicon (Si) electrode surfaces is a powerful approach to engineer electroresponsive monolayers relevant to microelectronics, electrocatalysis, and information storage and processing. While common strategies to functionalize Si interfaces exploit molecularly dissolved building blocks, only a handful number of studies have leveraged the structure-function relationships of π-aggregates to tune the electronic structures of hybrid monolayers at Si interfaces. Herein, we show that the semiconducting properties of -type monolayers constructed on Si electrodes are intimately correlated to the initial aggregation state of π-conjugated chromophore precursors derived from bay-substituted perylene bisimide (PBI) units.

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We propose that GDNF, a glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor, can promote hair follicle neogenesis and skin regeneration after wounding by directing the fate of dermal fibroblasts. Our hypothesis is largely based on detailed GDNF and receptor analysis during skin regenerative stages, as well as the induction of GDNF receptors after wounding between the pro-regenerative spiny mouse (genus Acomys) and its less-regenerative descendant, the house mouse (Mus musculus). To characterize the GDNF-target cells, we will conduct a series of lineage-tracing experiments in conjunction with single-cell RNA and assay for transposase-accessible chromatin sequencing experiments.

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Krüppel-like factor gene function in the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi assessed by CRISPR/Cas9-mediated genome editing.

Development

September 2021

Department of Biology, University of Miami, Cox Science Center, 1301 Memorial Drive, Miami, FL 33146, USA.

The Krüppel-like factor (Klf) gene family encodes transcription factors that play an important role in the regulation of stem cell proliferation, cell differentiation and development in bilaterians. Although Klf genes have been shown to specify functionally various cell types in non-bilaterian animals, their role in early-diverging animal lineages has not been assessed. Thus, the ancestral activity of these transcription factors in animal development is not well understood.

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Fluorescent nanoparticles as tools in ecology and physiology.

Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc

October 2021

Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Ravila 14a, 50411, Tartu, Estonia.

Fluorescent nanoparticles (FNPs) have been widely used in chemistry and medicine for decades, but their employment in biology is relatively recent. Past reviews on FNPs have focused on chemical, physical or medical uses, making the extrapolation to biological applications difficult. In biology, FNPs have largely been used for biosensing and molecular tracking.

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Leveraging the Assembly of a Rylene Dye to Tune the Semiconducting Properties of Functionalized n-Type, Hybrid Si Interfaces.

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces

January 2021

Department of Chemistry, University of Miami, Cox Science Center, 1301 Memorial Drive, Coral Gables, Florida 33146, United States.

The functionalization of silicon electrodes with π-conjugated chromophores opens new avenues to engineer hybrid semiconducting interfaces relevant to information storage and processing. Notably, molecularly dissolved π-conjugated units, such as ferrocene derivatives, are traditionally exploited as building blocks to construct well-defined interfaces that establish electrochemically addressable platforms with which to investigate electron transfer properties and charge storage capabilities. In contrast, planar π-conjugated building blocks such as naphthalene diimide (NDI) cores enable the formation of solvated aggregates equipped with emergent electronic structures not manifested by the parent, molecularly dissolved building blocks.

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Brain machine interfaces (BMIs), introduced into the daily lives of individuals with injuries or disorders of the nervous system such as spinal cord injury, stroke, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, can improve the quality of life. BMIs rely on the capability of microelectrode arrays to monitor the activity of large populations of neurons. However, maintaining a stable, chronic electrode-tissue interface that can record neuronal activity with a high signal-to-noise ratio is a key challenge that has limited the translation of such technologies.

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Exploring vitamin D signalling within skin cancer.

Clin Endocrinol (Oxf)

April 2020

Cox Science Center, Biology Department, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA.

Sunlight exposure of the skin is associated with both risks and benefits. On one hand, sunlight ultraviolet (UV) radiation can cause skin cancer through signature DNA mutations. On the other hand, it can be absorbed in the skin by 7-dehydrocholesterol to instigate endogenous synthesis of vitamin D to regulate anticancer effects.

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The surface coverage and molecular composition of redox-active molecules anchored on conductive surfaces regulate the kinetic and thermodynamic parameters of charge transfer reactions, providing a means to tune the electrochemical properties of hybrid materials. Herein, anchoring strategies and structural properties of redox-active probes, derived from ferrocene (Fc) and naphthalene diimide (NDI), are shown to regulate the electrochemical properties of functionalized p-doped Si(111) surfaces. Covalent functionalization of hydrogen-terminated Si(111) surfaces with Fc and NDI affords redox-active hybrid interfaces characterized through microscopy, spectroscopy, and voltammetry methods.

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Reconfiguration of π-conjugated superstructures enabled by redox-assisted assembly.

Chem Commun (Camb)

May 2019

Department of Chemistry, University of Miami, Cox Science Center, 1301 Memorial Drive, Coral Gables, FL 33146, USA.

We show that n-doping supramolecular assemblies built from perylene diimide units provides a means to modulate the structure-function properties of these materials. In addition to highlighting the design principles, a combination of spectroscopic and microscopic characterization correlates an increase in the free-exciton bandwidth with the formation of mesoscale hierarchical superstructures.

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Ecological character displacement alters the outcome of priority effects during community assembly.

Ecology

August 2019

Department of Biology, 215 Cox Science Center, University of Miami, 1301 Memorial Drive, Coral Gables, Miami, Florida, 33146, USA.

Character displacement may facilitate species coexistence through niche partitioning. However, the degree to which character displacement influences broader patterns of community assembly is unclear. Here, we capitalize on a natural experiment of community assembly on the oceanic island of Bermuda.

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How climate affects extreme events and hence ecological population models.

Ecology

June 2019

Department of Biology, Stanford University, 371 Serra Mall, Stanford, California, 94305, USA.

Extreme events significantly impact ecosystems and are predicted to increase in frequency and/or magnitude with climate change. Generalized extreme value (GEV) distributions describe most ecologically relevant extreme events, including hurricanes, wildfires, and disease spread. In climate science, the GEV is widely used as an accurate and flexible tool over large spatial scales (>10  km ) to study how changes in climate shift extreme events.

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Cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) is one of the most common non-melanoma skin cancers worldwide. While its exact tumorigenesis mechanisms is far from well-established and less satisfied therapeutic strategy can be clinically used nowadays. In this study, we intended to investigate the role of DNA damage-inducible transcript 4 (DDIT4) in human SCC.

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The impact of channel capture on estuarine hydro-morphodynamics and water quality in the Amazon delta.

Sci Total Environ

May 2018

Rod. Juscelino Kubitschek, km.2, Bloco de Ciências Ambientais - Jardim Equatorial, Universidade Federal do Amapá, Macapá, Amapá 68903-419, Brazil. Electronic address:

Due to progressive erosion of the new Urucurituba Channel, the Amazon River has recently captured almost all discharge from the lower Araguari River (Amapá-AP, Brazil), which previously flowed directly to the Atlantic Ocean. These recent geomorphological changes have caused strong impacts on the landscape and hydrodynamic patterns near the Araguari River mouth, especially the alteration of the riverine drainage system and its water quality. Landsat images were used to assess the estuarine landscape morphodynamic, particularly the expansion of the Urucurituba Channel, 80km from the Araguari River mouth, chronicling its connection to the Amazon River.

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Alpha-l-Fucosidase Immunoassay for Early Detection of Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Anal Chem

September 2017

Department of Chemistry, University of Miami , 1301 Memorial Drive, Cox Science Center, Coral Gables, Florida 33146, United States.

Detection of alpha-l-fucosidase has been shown to have relevance in diagnosing hepatocellular carcinoma. Few assays have been developed to measure this enzyme, with most relying on colorimetric techniques involving the enzyme's kinetics. While these assays are facile and quick, the sensitivity is not always sufficient for early tumor detection.

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A resorcinarene for inhibition of Aβ fibrillation.

Chem Sci

March 2017

Department of Chemistry , Cox Science Center , University of Miami, Coral Gables , Florida 33146 , USA . Email:

Amyloid-β peptides (Aβ) fibrillation is the hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD). However, it has been challenging to discover potent agents in order to inhibit Aβ fibrillation. Herein, we demonstrated the effect of resorcinarene on inhibiting Aβ fibrillation experimental and computational methods.

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Spatial patterning of excitatory and inhibitory neuropil territories during spinal circuit development.

J Comp Neurol

May 2017

Department of Biology, Cox Science Center, University of Miami, 1301 Memorial Drive, Coral Gables, Florida.

To generate rhythmic motor behaviors, both single neurons and neural circuits require a balance between excitatory inputs that trigger action potentials and inhibitory inputs that promote a stable resting potential (E/I balance). Previous studies have focused on individual neurons and have shown that, over a short spatial scale, excitatory and inhibitory (E/I) synapses tend to form structured territories with inhibitory inputs enriched on cell bodies and proximal dendrites and excitatory inputs on distal dendrites. However, systems-level E/I patterns, at spatial scales larger than single neurons, are largely uncharted.

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Study of the Alpha-l-Fucosidase Langmuir Monolayer at the Air-Water Interface.

J Phys Chem B

December 2016

Department of Chemistry, University of Miami , 1301 Memorial Drive, Cox Science Center, Coral Gables, Florida 33146, United States.

Alpha-l-fucosidase is a known biomarker for hepatocellular carcinoma that has shown great potential in diagnostics. Most of the focus for this enzyme has been on the free form found in serum; however, little is known of the properties of the minor portion of membrane-bound alpha-l-fucosidase. To better understand the properties of membrane-bound alpha-l-fucosidase, this enzyme was surveyed at the air-water interface.

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The Presence of a Functionally Tripartite Through-Gut in Ctenophora Has Implications for Metazoan Character Trait Evolution.

Curr Biol

October 2016

Department of Invertebrate Zoology, Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, MRC-163, PO Box 37012, Washington, DC 20013-7012, USA. Electronic address:

The current paradigm of gut evolution assumes that non-bilaterian metazoan lineages either lack a gut (Porifera and Placozoa) or have a sac-like gut (Ctenophora and Cnidaria) and that a through-gut originated within Bilateria [1-8]. An important group for understanding early metazoan evolution is Ctenophora (comb jellies), which diverged very early from the animal stem lineage [9-13]. The perception that ctenophores possess a sac-like blind gut with only one major opening remains a commonly held misconception [4, 5, 7, 14, 15].

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Conserved expression of vertebrate microvillar gene homologs in choanocytes of freshwater sponges.

Evodevo

July 2016

Department of Biological Sciences, University of Denver, F.W. Olin Hall, Room 102, 2190 E. Iliff Ave., Denver, CO 80208 USA.

Background: The microvillus is a versatile organelle that serves important functions in disparate animal cell types. However, from a molecular perspective, the microvillus has been well studied in only a few, predominantly vertebrate, contexts. Little is known about how differences in microvillar structure contribute to differences in function, and how these differences evolved.

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Lions (Panthera leo) solve, learn, and remember a novel resource acquisition problem.

Anim Cogn

September 2016

Lion Country Safari, 2003 Lion Country Safari Rd, Loxahatchee, FL, 33470, USA.

The social intelligence hypothesis proposes that the challenges of complex social life bolster the evolution of intelligence, and accordingly, advanced cognition has convergently evolved in several social lineages. Lions (Panthera leo) offer an ideal model system for cognitive research in a highly social species with an egalitarian social structure. We investigated cognition in lions using a novel resource task: the suspended puzzle box.

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Premise Of The Study: The cold season in the Arctic extends over 8 to 9 mo, yet little is known about vascular plant physiology during this period. Evergreen species photosynthesize under the snow, implying that they are exchanging water with the atmosphere. However, liquid water available for plant uptake may be limited at this time.

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Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most recurrent and lethal cancers worldwide. The low survival rate of this particular strain of carcinoma is largely due to the late stages at which it is diagnosed. Tumorigenesis of hepatocellular carcinoma is most frequently detected through ultrasonography, magnetic resonance imaging and computerized tomography scans, however, these methods are poor for detection of early tumor development.

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