Follicular Dendritic Cells and Activation of T Cells Bearing Latent HIV

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Jared Huber and Dr. Gregory F. Burton GOAL Determine the pathway by which FDC cytokines activate HIV transcription in CD4+ T‐cells harboring latent HIV. BACKGROUND & IMPORTANCE HIV Latency in CD4+ T Cells Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) attacks the immune system by infecting helper (CD4+) T‐cells. HIV injects viral genetic material into the T‐cell, and […]

Biological Pathways in Determining Personalized Treatments

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Ariana Hedges and Dr. W. Evan Johnson, Statistics At the current state of diagnostic capability, two patients with the same cancer diagnosis may respond very differently to the same treatment. Unfortunately, failure to respond to a particular treatment wastes valuable time and may result in disease progression that may be detrimental for the patient. Therefore, […]

Time Reversal in Non-idealistic Environments

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Blaine Harker and Drs. Kent Gee and Brian Anderson, Dept. of Physics and Astronomy Time reversal is a relatively new type of acoustic localization with many applications, such as lithotripsy to destroy kidney stones, and secure underwater sound communication, though in some ways time reversal is still in the development stage. To this end, we […]

Synthesis of S-Equol using Heck Coupling Reaction and Phase-Transfer Catalysis

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Chelsey Hancock Please list all accomplishments, achievements, publications, presentations, or other scholarly productivity that resulted from your ORCA project. This may include submissions to peer-reviewed journals, conference presentations or papers, performances, exhibitions, internships, scholarships, graduate school opportunities, local presentations, or awards that followed your mentoring experience. Through this ORCA grant, I was able to present […]

Up Congruences of Modular Functions Modulo Powers of Primes

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Michael Griffin and Dr. Paul Jenkins, Department of Mathematics Modular forms are constructs of complex analysis that possess many intricate connections to widely-separated branches of mathematics. In the most well-known application of these functions, Andrew Wiles established a connection between the Fourier coefficients of modular forms and elliptic curves–objects of analytic geometry–in order to prove […]

Reactivation of latent HIV in CD4+ T cells through FDC costimulation

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Matthew Greer and Dr. Greg Burton, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry I received an ORCA grant for a project entitled “Reactivation of latent HIV in CD4+ T cells through FDC costimulation.” The original hypothesis of this research was that the factor FDCs (follicular dendritic cells) produce to reactivate latent HIV in T cells is a […]

Genetic Rescue of the Irk 2 Knockout Phenotype by Ectopic Expression of Irk 2 WT

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Brandon Gassaway and Dr. Emily Bates, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Anderson-Tawil Syndrome (ATS) is characterized by morphological defects including clinodactyly (abnormal curvature of digits), syndactyly (fused digits), micrognathia (small jaw), cleft palate, and hypertelorism (wide-set eyes) as well as periodic paralysis and heart arrhythmia. Mutations in inwardly rectifying potassium (Irk) channels are found in […]

Analysis of the Kinetics of Atmospherically Important Reactions

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Marie Killian (Chilton) and Dr. Jaron Hansen, Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry Organic peroxy radicals react to form tropospheric ozone, which harms the health of humans and vegetation and is considered the most significant pollutant in rural areas.1 Many of the individual reactions in the overall mechanism for ozone formation involve radicals. Radicals are highly […]