Rat cardiac fibroblasts—which happen to be in the shape of a heart—grown on hydrogels mimicking cardiac tissue and treated with human serum.

Mimicking the heart's microenvironment

Sept. 10, 2019

CU Boulder engineers and faculty from the Consortium for Fibrosis Research & Translation (CFReT) at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus have teamed up to develop biomaterial-based “mimics” of heart tissues to measure patients’ responses to an aortic valve replacement procedure, offering new insight into the ways that cardiac tissue re-shapes...

Phylogenetic tree representing described and previously undescribed mycobacterial hsp65 sequences.

A Global Survey of Mycobacterial Diversity in Soil

Aug. 13, 2019

Mycobacteria are a diverse bacterial group ubiquitous in many soil and aquatic environments. Members of this group have been associated with human and other animal diseases, including the nontuberculous mycobacteria (NTM), which are of growing relevance to public health worldwide. Although soils are often considered an important source of environmentally...

Examples of contig depth distributions from (A) Usnea cornuta and (B) Heterodermia leucomelos used to estimate single‐copy depth of the mycobiont nuclear genome that show the cystobasidiomycete contigs (yellow arrows) fall near, or within, one order of magnitude of the distribution of the 1000 largest contigs in the metagenome (blue bars).

A taxonomically broad metagenomic survey of 339 species spanning 57 families suggests cystobasidiomycete yeasts are not ubiquitous across all lichens

Aug. 8, 2019

Premise Lichens are fungi that enter into obligate symbioses with photosynthesizing organisms (algae, cyanobacteria). Traditional narratives of lichens as binary symbiont pairs have given way to their recognition as dynamic metacommunities. Basidiomycete yeasts, particularly of the genus Cyphobasidium , have been inferred to be widespread and important components of lichen...

ATP driven actomyosin cross-bridge cycle

The ATPase cycle of human muscle myosin II Isoforms: adaptation of a single mechanochemical cycle for different physiological roles

Aug. 5, 2019

Striated muscle myosins are encoded by a large gene family in all mammals, including human. These isoforms define several of the key characteristics of the different striated muscle fiber types including maximum shortening velocity. We have previously used recombinant isoforms of the motor domains of seven different human myosin isoforms...

Figure

Three-Dimensional Microscale Imaging and Measurement of Soft Material Contact Interfaces under Quasi-Static Normal Indentation and Shear

July 9, 2019

Understanding the contact and friction between soft materials is vital to a wide variety of engineering applications including soft sealants and medical devices such as catheters and stents. Although the mechanisms of friction between stiff materials have been extensively studied, the mechanisms of friction between soft materials are much less...

Ring

Extensive chloroplast genome rearrangement amongst three closely related Halamphora spp. (Bacillariophyceae), and evidence for rapid evolution as compared to land plants

July 2, 2019

Diatoms are the most diverse lineage of algae, but the diversity of their chloroplast genomes, particularly within a genus, has not been well documented. Herein, we present three chloroplast genomes from the genus Halamphora ( H . americana , H . calidilacuna , and H . coffeaeformis ), the first...

Expression and localization of Zn2+ transporter ZnT3 in cultured neurons by immunofuorescence.

Intracellular Zn2+ transients modulate global gene expression in dissociated rat hippocampal neurons

June 27, 2019

Zinc (Zn 2+ ) is an integral component of many proteins and has been shown to act in a regulatory capacity in different mammalian systems, including as a neurotransmitter in neurons throughout the brain. While Zn 2+ plays an important role in modulating neuronal potentiation and synaptic plasticity, little is...

Evolution Meeting 2019

Chris Smith: Evolution Meeting

June 25, 2019

I just got back from the Evolution Meeting in Providence and I’m full of information and ideas for research. I had the opportunity to reconnect with past colleagues and meet some new people. Other CU Boulder folks attended, including the labs of Dan Doak, Nancy Emery, Nolan Kane, Stacy Smith,...

Satellite image of the greater Boulder/Denver /Colorado Springs area

Evidence of substrate endemism of lichens on Fox Hills Sandstone: Discovery and description of Lecanora lendemeri as new to science

June 5, 2019

Recent lichenological investigations of Fox Hills Formation sandstone outcrops in Colorado resulted in the discovery of three populations that represent an undescribed member of the Lecanora dispersa group (¼Myriolecis). This new species is different from all others in the group in its production of usnic acid, which yields apothecia that...

 Schematic of gRNA binding, R-loop formation and Markov chain model

Development of Novel CRISPR-Based Methods for Transcriptional Control Over Bacterial Gene Expression

May 31, 2019

One of the challenges of the 21st century is creating a sustainable economy that is able to serve the needs of a growing population with the decreasing supply of natural resources. In addition to alternative energy sources, renewable economy concerns production of materials and chemicals. The chemical and polymer industries...

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