No description available.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 133-160).

No description available.

Proefschrift Universiteit van Amsterdam. / Met bibliogr., lit. opg. - Met samenvatting in het Nederlands.

Two kinds of affinity chromatography, CDP-choline- and CTP-Sepharose 4B, were investigated for purification of the cytosolic CTP:phosphocholine cytidylyltransferase from rat liver. The enzyme did not show strong affinity for the CDP-choline Sepharose resin, but bound to the CTP-Sepharose column in the presence of 14 mM magnesium acetate. The combination of CTP affinity chromatography with ion-exchange techniques provided about 70-fold purification of the cytosolic enzyme with a specific activity of about 90 units per milligram protein. The influence of diphenylsulfone compounds on the synthesis of phosphatidylcholine by the CDP-choline pathway was examined in isolated rat hepatocytes and HeLa cells. The administration of the sulfones (100 ug/ml), except dapsone, to HeLa cells inhibited the total [methyl-³H]choline incorporation into the cells, but did not change the rate of conversion of choline to phosphatidylcholine. The addition of the sulfones (100 ug/ml) to rat hepatocytes did not inhibit the biosynthesis of phosphatidylcholine and choline metabolism. The effect of vasopressin on the distribution of cytidylyl-transferase between cytosol and microsomes in rat hepatocytes was also investigated. The digitonin-mediated release of cytosolic cytidylyltransferase was reduced from the cells treated with vasopressin (5-20 nM) , while the enhanced rate of incorporation of [methyl-³H]choline into phosphatidylcholine was not observed. / Medicine, Faculty of / Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Department of / Graduate

Yes / Recently, the finding of 8,000 year old wheat DNA from submerged marine sediments (1) was challenged on the basis of a lack of signal of cytosine deamination relative to three other data sets generated from young samples of herbarium and museum specimens, and a 7,000 year old human skeleton preserved in a cave environment (2). The study used a new approach for low coverage data sets to which tools such as mapDamage cannot be applied to infer chemical damage patterns. Here we show from the analysis of 148 palaeogenomic data sets that the rate of cytosine deamination is a thermally correlated process, and that organellar generally shows higher rates of deamination than nuclear DNA in comparable environments. We categorize four clusters of deamination rates (alpha,beta,gamma,epsilon) that are associated with cold stable environments, cool but thermally fluctuating environments, and progressively warmer environments. These correlations show that the expected level of deamination in the sedaDNA would be extremely low. The low coverage approach to detect DNA damage by Weiss et al. (2) fails to identify damage samples from the cold class of deamination rates. Finally, different enzymes used in library preparation processes exhibit varying capability in reporting cytosine deamination damage in the 5 prime region of fragments. The PCR enzyme used in the sedaDNA study would not have had the capability to report 5 prime cytosine deamination, as they do not read over uracil residues, and signatures of damage would have better been sought at the 3 prime end. The 8,000 year old sedaDNA matches both the thermal age prediction of fragmentation, and the expected level of cytosine deamination for the preservation environment. Given these facts and the use of rigorous controls these data meet the criteria of authentic ancient DNA to an extremely stringent level.

No description available.

Environmental signals such as photoperiod and temperature provide plants with seasonal information, allowing them to time flowering to occur in favourable conditions. Most ecotypes of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana flower earlier in long photoperiods and after prolonged exposure to cold (vernalization). The vernalized state is stable through mitosis, but is not transmitted to progeny, suggesting that the vernalization signal may be transmitted via a modification of DNA such as cytosine methylation. The role of methylation in the vernalization response is investigated in this thesis. ¶ Arabidopsis plants transformed with an antisense construct to the cytosine methyltransferase METI (AMT) showed significant decreases in methylation. AMT plants flowered significantly earlier than unvernalized wildtype plants, and the promotion of flowering correlated with the extent of demethylation. The flowering time of mutants with decreased DNA methylation (ddm1) was promoted only in growth conditions in which wildtype plants showed a vernalization response, suggesting that the early flowering response to demethylation operated specifically through the vernalization pathway. ¶ The AMT construct was crossed into two late flowering mutants that differed in vernalization responsiveness. Demethylation promoted flowering of the vernalization responsive mutant fca, but not of the fe mutant, which has only a slight vernalization response. This supports the hypothesis that demethylation is a step in the vernalization pathway. ¶ The role of gibberellic acid (GA) in the early flowering response to demethylation was investigated by observing the effect of the gai mutation, which disrupts the GA signal transduction pathway, on flowering time in plants with demethylated DNA. The presence of a single gai allele delayed flowering, suggesting that the early flowering response to demethylation requires a functional GA signal transduction pathway, and that demethylation increases GA levels or responses, directly or indirectly. ¶ In most transgenic lines, AMT-mediated demethylation did not fully substitute for vernalization. This indicates that part of the response is not affected by METI-mediated methylation, and may involve a second methyltransferase or a factor other than methylation. A second Arabidopsis methyltransferase, METIIa, was characterized and compared to METI. The two genes are very similar throughout the coding region, and share the location of their eleven introns, indicating that they diverged relatively recently. Both are transcribed in all tissues and at all developmental stages assayed, but the level of expression of METI is significantly higher than that of METIIa. The possible functions of METI, METIIa, and other Arabidopsis cytosine methyltransferase genes recently identified are discussed.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 139-158).