Honors Program Theses

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Open Access Honors Program Thesis

First Advisor

Ira Simet

Keywords

Eukaryotic cells; DNA polymerases; Thermophilic fungi--Genetics;

Abstract

In eukaryotes, the enzyme DNA polymerase a (DNAPa) begins the process of DNA replication. Ultimately, this means DNAPa is responsible for all cell proliferation and growth of an organism. The mechanism by which this enzyme operates is interesting due to its implications in medicine; however, that mechanism remains largely elusive. DNAPa, including its catalytic subunit, has been studied in several eukaryotes. Unfortunately, these organisms present issues with the ease of study and with ethics. This research delved into a novel model organism that was potentially devoid of all these issues: the fungus Thermomyces lanuginosus. Though T. lanuginosus was easy to handle, it presented its own problems due to the lack of previous research performed on it. However, a method of growing the fungus quickly and cleanly was established, as was a procedure for extracting its DNA. The following details these processes, as well as how PCR primers were designed to locate the gene for DNAPa's catalytic subunit in T. lanuginosus. One set of primers described below seems especially promising, and recommendations for future work with these primers and their amplified product are given.

Year of Submission

2013

Department

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

University Honors Designation

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the designation University Honors

Comments

If you are the rightful copyright holder of this thesis and wish to have it removed from the Open Access Collection, please submit a request to scholarworks@uni.edu and include clear identification of the work, preferably with URL.

Date Original

5-2013

Object Description

1 PDF file (73 pages)

Language

en

File Format

application/pdf

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