Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

8-2024

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph. D.

Department

Biology

Degree Program

Biology, PhD

Committee Chair

Running, Mark

Committee Member

Hwangbo, Dae-Sung

Committee Member

Matoba, Nobuyuki

Committee Member

Perlin, Mike

Committee Member

Schultz, David

Author's Keywords

Molecular techniques; industrial applications

Abstract

Multidisciplinary research is vital in modern science. Combining molecular genetics with engineering disciplines such as material science, robotics, or 3D printing is not a new concept but one that can continue to lead to breakthroughs that will benefit society. Science does not and should not occur in a vacuum, and, in early 2020, the world saw the emergence of a pandemic that shifted the focus of scientific research for a time. This manuscript describes aspects of this journey and the fruit that was born from this historic event. In this dissertation, we used plants and bacteria to produce compounds that are feedstocks for conductive organic biodegradable material used in 3D printing. These compounds included thiophenes and eumelanin. Although the thiophene aspect of this project proved difficult, producing eumelanin appears to be economically viable and was manipulated to be 3D printed. Its properties were explored, and eumelanin remains a polymer of considerable interest for the future. We also explored topographical surfaces designed for antimicrobial properties utilizing carbon, germanium, and titanium. Some of these surfaces were inspired by nature, particularly cicada wing structures, which inherently are

antimicrobial. This research is vital for preventing infection from diseases and was greatly inspired by the societal context occurring during the making of this dissertation. Lastly, we explored an exciting new plant heterologous protein expression system. This system, known as ggb P. patens, is unicellular, does not differentiate, and can undergo homologous recombination for gene targeting, a trait that is valuable for scientific research and industry. Homologous recombination in our model system, P. patens, occurs frequently enough to allow for targeting of genes for replacement and elimination This system was transformed with the fluorescent protein TdTomato to understand its potential viability as a model heterologous protein expression system. TdTomato is a reporter protein, and utilizing TdTomato as a reporter allowed us to explore different avenues of transformation with ggb P. patens. Additionally, a practical application was explored by conducting experiments to transform ggb with the antiviral drug Q-Griffithsin. Although the results were inconclusive, the construct for transfection is complete and optimization is all that is needed for this approach. Using tdTomato as a reporter, we also attempted to combine the research with antimicrobial surfaces to create a plant transformation experiment with ggb. Although the methods need further optimization, we showed extreme potential in the approach as a viable transformation method for ggb and potentially other plant cultures.

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