Project description:Assessing the use of a T drain approach for an anastomotic leak after gastrointestinal surgery. The study’s aim is to retrospectively assess the safety and benefits of this approach.
Project description:<p>Spit for Science™ is a university-wide research opportunity with the scientific goal of understanding how genetic and environmental factors come together to influence substance use and emotional health across the college years and beyond. To address this goal, we have comprehensively and longitudinally studied eligible incoming freshmen (18 years or older) from a diverse urban university, assessing a wide range of risk and protective factors, including both biological susceptibility and environmental risk, and a variety of outcome measures, particularly alcohol use and other substances, and difficulties with emotional health. Our goal is to assess how risk and protective factors dynamically interact to contribute to behavior health outcomes over time and plan to use findings from the project to inform prevention and intervention efforts and aid in university policy and programming in ways that can support and promote student success.</p> <p><u>Methods</u>: In the fall of their freshman year, first-time college students over the age of 18 are invited to complete an online survey containing broad questions about personality and behavior, as well as family, friends, and experiences growing up. Students can also provide a saliva sample and participate in the DNA component of the project (participation in the DNA component is not a requirement for participation in the survey). Each subsequent spring students are asked to complete a follow-up survey, enabling researchers to study patterns of substance use and emotional health across the college years.</p>
Project description:Ctenophores’ amazing capacity of regeneration has fascinated biologists for centuries. The morphological features of ctenophore regeneration have been documented, but the molecular and cellular components behind this phenomenon have remained a mystery. Here, next generation sequencing technologies and transcriptomic analysis are used to investigate the regeneration dynamics in the ctenophore Mnemiopsis leidyi. The resulting data identify multiple signaling pathways that might be involved in ctenophore regeneration. These include evolutionarily conserved pathways, such as Ca2+-dependent and MAP-kinase signaling pathways, that are up regulated during regeneration, as well as genes involved in energetics and cytoskeleton function. The data also show evidence for involvement of dozens of ctenophore specific secretory molecules, their receptors and processing components that are important signal messengers in regeneration. A unique subset of transcription factors were also found to be involved in regeneration which may be upstream regulators of those signaling pathways. In summary, our data indicate that the strategies which ctenophores employ to regenerate use a unique combination of evolutionarily conserved and ctenophore specific signaling components. These data provide novel insights into the mechanisms of regeneration in the earliest branching taxa in Metazoa.