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This study was undertaken to investigate the facilitating effects of imitation procedures upon a traditional behavior modification program. A "token economy" was instituted within a workshop setting.

Titanium dioxide colloid with a size of particles between 20 - 40 nm was prepared. Subsequently, three substances were syntetized - methylen bis(phosphonic) acid H4L1 , 4-phosphono-butyric acid H3L2 and 4-hydroxy-4,4-diphosphono-butyric acid H5L3 . Surface of the colloidal nanoparticles was modified using these substances (H4L1 , H3L2 and H5L3 ). Then stability of these systems was studied using acid-base titration and addition of calcium ions. Keywords: TiO2, nanoparticles, surface modification

M.A. (Clinical Psychology) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

Magister Public Health - MPH / Background: Hypertension (HTN) complications are one of the leading causes of disability and mortality worldwide, with increasing trends noted in Africa. The most neglected causes of uncontrolled HTN and its complications are unhealthy diets, excess alcohol consumption and physical inactivity. Adherence to recommended lifestyle modifications remains low in Zimbabwe. This study seeks to explore the factors influencing adherence to World Health Organisation (WHO) lifestyle modification recommendations in patients with hypertension at Parirenyatwa Hospital, Harare. Methodology: An analytic cross-sectional study design was utilized. 328 hypertensive patients aged at least 18, receiving care at Parirenyatwa Hospital were recruited into the study. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect information on demographics, knowledge and adherence to WHO recommended lifestyle modifications from participants. Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS) version 20 was used for data analysis. The Spearman test was used to test for linear correlation among variables and the 5-point Likert Scale was utilized to categorize the extent of practice of dietary and physical activity recommendations by WHO.

Thesis advisor: Eranthie Weerapana / Thesis advisor: Jianmin Gao / Proteins are composed of the 20 naturally occurring amino acids and are further modified by a variety of post-translational modifications (PTMS). Naturally occurring amino acids are diverse in structure and function. Catalytic amino acids, or nucleophilic amino acids, are of particular interest because of their contribution to chemical transformations in the cell. Synthetic covalent modification is a means to further functionalize or diversify proteins. These modifications, or enhancements, allow for improved understanding of protein structure, function and activity. For instance, isotope labeling of amino acid side chains in NMR studies enable investigators to study protein dynamics upon substrate or ligand binding. Fluorescence labeling is particularly useful to investigate protein cellular localization. Covalent modification is a useful tool to investigate the relative level of activity for protein known to be regulated by PTMs. An important feature of covalent modification reactions is site specificity, as this dictates the location, number of modifications, and protein targets. Tyrosine is of particular interest because it is both nucleophilic and aromatic. These characteristics contribute to the existence of tyrosine residues in both the protein surface and hydrophobic cores. Tyrosine is incorporated into proteins at a relatively low frequency. Unlike lysine, which is ubiquitous on protein surfaces, the low number of potential sites for general tyrosine modifications makes it an attractive site for surface bioconjugation modifications. A low number of surface modifications is less likely to perturb native protein function. Bioconjugation reactions give access to functionalizing the surface of proteins with moieties such as fluorophores, PEG, peptides, or drugs. Tyrosine is an attractive target for modifications because it is found in the active sites of a variety of enzymes such as sialidases, glutathione-S transferases, corticosteroid 11-beta-dehydrogensase, DNA topoisomerase, and ferredoxin-NADP+ reductase. Provided here is a survey of the known non-selective and selective synthetic chemical modification reactions for tyrosine. To investigate nucleophilic amino acids, Activity Based Protein Profiling (ABPP) may be implemented to investigate the role of these residues. ABPP utilizes small molecule covalent probes as a tool to selectively target enzymes in their active state. To investigate a protein of interest (POI) (or class of proteins) by ABPP, it is necessary to use a small molecule covalent probe that selectively reacts with the POI over other proteins within the proteome. Due to this requirement, it is necessary to expand the current ABPP probe toolbox to increase the coverage of what proteins in the proteome may be studied. Inspired by findings in the literature, our lab sought to explore the utility of various aryl halides for implementation in ABPP probes to overcome this limitation. This study revealed dichlorotriazine as a biologically relevant and reactive electrophile. A focus was placed on a dichlorotriazine containing probe library (LAS1-LAS20). LAS17 was discovered to be a potent and selective inhibitor of human glutathione S-transferase pi (GSTP1). Further studies revealed GSTP1 as a novel therapeutic target for the treatment of triple negative breast cancer. Other studies revealed several members of the dichlorotriazine library were found to covalently modify purified recombinant human aldolase A (ALDOA) in the presence of a complex cellular background. Additionally, LAS9 was identified as an inhibitor of ALDOA retro aldol condensation activity in vitro. Lastly, the final chapter highlights two collaborations in which tandem mass spectrometry experiments aid in the characterization of experimental data. In the first collaboration, a quantitative cysteine reactivity profiling method was used to characterize the selectivity of a cysteine reactive covalent NRF2-inducing small molecule, MIND4-17. In the second collaboration, analysis of tryptic mass spectrometry data enabled high resolution characterization of peptide sequencing for superfolder green fluorescent protein (sfGFP) expressed from observed internal nonsense suppression. Identification of the misincorporated amino acid facilitated the elucidation of the cross-talk mechanism. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Chemistry.

Thesis advisor: Anthony T. Annunziato / The project I am presenting aimed to: 1. Elucidate the pattern of post- translational modification on the different variants of newly synthesized histones H3 in mammalian cells; 2. Reveal whether the acetylation of residue K56 on newly synthesized H3 histones plays a role in the incorporation of the histone into chromatin in mammalian cells; and 3. Determine whether the acetylation of residue K56 on newly synthesized H3 histones plays a role in the incorporation of the histone specifically in replicating chromatin in mammalian cells. The experiments to answer these questions were performed using HEK293 cells with inducible expression of FLAG-histones, enabling us to control the synthesis of new histones of interest and to detect and analyze their presence and relative levels in the cells. The results suggest that the acetylation of lysine 56 on histone H3 may play a positive role in the incorporation of the histone into new chromatin, and lack of acetylation may be reducing the efficiency of incorporation compared to acetylated histones. / Thesis (MS) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Biology.

Bioorthogonal reactions, due to its excellent selectivity and time-efficiency, have emerged as a popular tool for protein and cell probing. Among all the bioorthogonal reactions, the inverse electron-demand Diels-Alder reaction (IEDDA) reaction has its advantage of bearing the fastest kinetics. Although the IEDDA reaction drew considerable attention in chemical biology in the last decade, challenges lie in finding the suitable dienophiles. Strained dienophiles, for example, trans-cyclooctene derivatives, can undergo ultrafast IEDDA reactions and therefore have been extensively developed. Unstrained alkenes and alkynes, however, have not been well investigated as IEDDA handles. In general, unstrained dienophiles are more straightforward to synthesise compared with strained dienophiles, therefore they are more accessible to researchers. In addition, the absence of a highly reactive bond makes unstrained dienophiles inert to biological nucleophiles, which allows effectively cellular labelling. In this dissertation, I described three different unstrained dienophiles for different biological purposes. Allyl handle is thiol-stable and non-toxic, which was utilised to label apoptotic cells in a pre-targeting manner. Enol ethers can react with tetrazines to decage protected amino acids and prodrugs. Potassium arylethynyltrifluoroborate, as a novel dienophile, was shown to react fast with pyridyl tetrazines controllably and this new IEDDA was applied to label proteins site-selectively and to fluorescently label two proteins orthogonally. In addition to IEDDA reactions, other bioorthogonal reactions were also developed using these versatile unstrained handles. Allyl-bearing amino acids and proteins can undergo an acetophenone-mediated hetero-[2+2] photocycloaddition with maleimide derivatives, expanding the toolbox of photo-triggered chemistry for protein modification. The potassium arylethynyltrifluoroborate handle was also found reactive in copper(I)-catalyzed alkyne-azide cycloaddition reaction (CuAAC) and showcased the huge potential for protein labelling and multicolour cellular labelling.

It has been proposed that backward inhibition (BI) is a mechanism which facilitates task-switching by suppressing the previous task. One view is that BI is generated in response to conflict between tasks being experienced during task-performance. Across twelve experiments, this thesis investigated this proposition by addressing two questions: What affects the size/presence of BI? and When is BI triggered?: What affects the size/presence of BI? and When is BI triggered? The findings from Chapter 2 suggest that BI is increased when conflict stemming from shared target features is present, and that the expectation, as well as experience, of conflict might increase BI. Chapter 3 suggests that BI is increased when target features are shared (and that no BI is present otherwise), but contrary to previous findings, BI is not increased when response features are shared. Chapter 4 provided indirect support for the view that BI can be present without between-task conflict (i.e., neither shared targets nor responses), and indicated that in such a context BI (at least at item-level) requires trial-by-trial cuing. Chapter 5 indicates that BI is triggered prior to response execution and after the preparation stage of task processing, therefore indicating that either the target processing stage or the response selection stage of task processing are responsible for triggering BI. Together, the results of the experiments in this thesis indicate that BI can be driven by conflict stemming from target sharing. However, there was no evidence that conflict stemming from response sharing drives BI. In addition, the data suggested that BI might be generated by the expectation of conflict and by task preparation. Therefore, BI might be applied in response to conflict at any stage of task processing and the decision to apply BI might be decided in advance of such conflict.

In order to contain many millions, or even billions of base pairs within every nucleus of a eukaryotic cell, DNA must be extensively packaged. This is achieved by association of DNA with packaging proteins, resulting in the formation of chromatin, which can lead to various degrees of compaction. The most extreme form of compaction is the highly condensed mitotic chromosome, formation of which is necessary for proper resolution and segregation of the genetic material during cell division. However, the exact nature of the structure of chromatin within the mitotic chromosome and the factors which regulate it remain subjects of debate and continued investigation. The hybrid cell line F1.1 presents a unique tool for the study of mitotic chromosome structure. This mouse cell line has been observed to present a distinct chromatin structure in mitosis assembled over a large region of DNA inserted into one of its chromosomes and originating from the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. Direct comparison of the structure of this distinct region of chromatin with that of the adjacent endogenous chromatin could provide insight into the nature of mitotic chromosome structure as well as the properties of the chromatin which are influencing this structure. Microscopy and Hi-C analyses showed that the mitotic chromatin organising or "scaffold" proteins are not altered over the region of S. pombe chromatin, but that the amount of chromatin organised around these proteins is diminished. In accordance with the "radial-loop" model of mitotic chromosome structure, we put forward a model whereby the S. pombe chromatin is organised into smaller chromatin loops around a constant organising scaffold. Examination of the histone post-translational modifications over the region of S. pombe chromatin revealed it to be highly heterochromatic, with high levels of H3K9me3 and associated factors such as HP1α and 5meC, and low levels of activating marks. Generation of further mammalian - S. pombe fusion cell lines recapitulated both the distinct mitotic structure and the heterochromatic profile of the inserted S. pombe chromatin. However, insertion of S. pombe DNA into a mouse cell by transfection rather than fusion resulted in a large region of S. pombe DNA that lacked both a distinct structure and heterochromatin. These results suggest that H3K9me3- mediated heterochromatin may influence the structure of chromatin in mitosis, leading to an organisation into smaller chromatin loops than non-heterochromatic regions.