Anthropology - Butler University

European species Chara canescens were used to attempt DNA amplification in Chara brittonii
and several other closely related species. Lack of amplification suggests that North American
and European species are too distantly related for primer recognition. A Hanes Trust Grant has
recently provided funding to develop species-specific primers for Chara brittonii and the related
species Chara zeylanica at the Savannah River Ecology Lab (University of Georgia) using stateof-the-art
Illumina paired-end sequencing. This will result in the production of 36 primers per
species which will then be screened and optimized to identify those with the greatest
polymorphism.
mTOR Signaling Mediates TBI-enhanced Neural Stem Cell Proliferation
Pich Seekaew, Faculty Sponsor: Jinhui Chen, Indiana University/Purdue University at
Indianapolis
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) induced neuron death was once thought to be irreversible.
However, the identification of neural stem cells (NSCs) in the adult brain holds the hope of
repairing injured brain following TBI. Our previous study showed that TBI promotes NSC
proliferation in an attempt to initial an innate repair and/or plasticity mechanisms. However, this
induced proliferation is transient without significantly increasing neurogenesis. It suggests that
additional intervention is required to further increase NSC proliferation to enhance neurogenesis
for successfully repairing the damaged brain following TBI. In order to determine the molecular
mechanism that mediates TBI-enhanced NSC proliferation, we assessed the activity of
mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling by detecting the level of Phospho-S6
Ribosomal protein (pS6), an indicator of the activity of mTOR signaling. We found that the level
of pS6 was transient but dramatically increased prior to TBI-enhanced NSC proliferation. In
contrast inhibiting the activity of mTOR signaling with rapamycin attenuated this effect,
indicating that mTOR signaling mediates TBI-enhanced NSC proliferation. Further stimulating
mTOR signaling strengthened the effect of TBI-enhanced NSC proliferation. These results
suggest that mTOR signaling mediates TBI-enhanced neural stem cell proliferation and
stimulating mTOR signaling may be a potential therapeutic approach to enhance neurogenesis
for post-traumatic functional recovery.
Identification of Transcription Factors Associated with Down Syndrome Skeletal
Abnormalities
Nicole Shepherd, Faculty Sponsor: Randall Roper, Indiana University/Purdue University at
Indianapolis
Individuals with Down syndrome (DS) exhibit a variety of phenotypes, including craniofacial
and skeletal dysmorphologies. It is believed that trisomic genes initiate phenotypes associated
with Down syndrome, though specific gene-phenotype relationships for DS are largely
unknown. We hypothesize that the altered expression of genes in three copies will also affect the
expression of downstream genes, including non-trisomic genes and play an important role in DS
phenotypes. Transcription factors, which encode proteins that bind to specific DNA sequences
controlling the flow of transcription, are among the genes that may be affected by trisomy. We
have identified genetic and phenotypic alterations in craniofacial precursors as early as
embryonic dayE9.5of the Ts65Dn mouse model of human DS. This mouse model is trisomic for
orthologs of approximately half of the genes on human chromosome 21. Previous microarray