News

On November 8th 2024, Baylor Undergraduate Research in Science & Technology (BURST) hosted its annual Research & Internship Day symposium at the Hurd Welcome Center.

Laparoscopy is a minimally invasive surgery that is accomplished by utilizing precise tools but has complications including awkward working angles, the grasp requiring substantial force, and a limited range of motion. After long hours of meticulous movement, surgeons will find themselves having muscle fatigue that can potentially reduce control and accuracy, leading to possible complications for the patient. Our experiment addressed the initial question of how the use of electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) may affect muscle fatigue to address the consequences of the complications of laparoscopic tools.

Food insecurity is a socioeconomic condition that affects many Texas communities, and is defined as an inability to access nutrient dense food. Affected communities are often susceptible to malnutrition and associated physiological consequences, such as immune system suppression. Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed the lives of millions of individuals, with certain populations being more susceptible to contracting and subsequently dying from the disease. The purpose of this study was to create a model of the implications of food insecurity on COVID-19 morbidity and mortality in Texas counties.

T he purpose of this experiment was to measure the effects of introducing shock therapy to Dugesia dorotocephala before versus during regeneration. Dugesia dorotocephala serves as a model organism because of their ability to regenerate by using pluripotent stem cells. Electric shock has been found to stimulate regeneration in Dugesia dorotocephala. In humans, shock therapy is a successful mechanism used to promote wound healing by stimulating the production of growth factors. In this experiment, this data was applied to Dugesia dorotocephala to determine if electric shock would trigger the division and specialization of pluripotent stem cells. Researchers hypothesized that if the Dugesia dorotocephala are allowed to regenerate while undergoing electric shock, they will regenerate faster.

A general increase in Laparoscopic procedures, for their many benefits versus their open surgery counterparts, has brought about a need to examine the means of training that are used to gauge the efficiency and competency of practitioners. With communication showing itself to be an integral part of surgical efficiency, this study looked to add a communicative aspect to a basic laparoscopic simulation to gauge whether current day evaluative methods are predictive of the success of a practitioner with other stimuli.

The putative function of Gene 42 within Arthrobacter phage Albanese has been annotated as a Cas4 family exonuclease; however, differences across comparative bioinformatic databases indicate that classification could be incorrect. Therefore, the purpose of this investigation was to determine whether Gene 42 encodes for a Cas4 nuclease. Similarities between Gene 42 and related nucleases (Cas4, AddAB, and RecBCD) were examined. 

As the Earth continues to become more polluted, concentrations of contaminants in ecosystems continue to rise. Furthermore, certain compounds and pesticides like glyphosate, one of the most commonly used herbicides in agriculture today, can be prone to runoff. However, not only glyphosate can contaminate bodies of water, since most aquatic ecosystems are a mixture of numerous chemicals and compounds. This creates an unknown risk for organisms and humans today, as the effects of the chemicals when in the presence of other chemicals are largely unknown. In this study, zebrafish (Danio rerio) were used to examine the toxic effects of lead, copper, glyphosate, and tri-exposures of the three chemicals. Zebrafish were used due to their genetic similarity to humans and their ease of use in the lab, qualities that make them beneficial for toxicological studies.

The petrochemical industry in Harris County has been implicated as contributing to greater environmental justice problems. To test this claim, data was compiled from a random sample of different counties in Texas such as Duval, Concho, Loving, Panola, and Swisher and then compared to Harris County. Geographic Information Systems was used to create maps of Total Toxic Inventory Releases, then compared to Toxic Inventory Releases from petrochemical plants and overall cancer risks for each of the counties. 

Vascular Endothelium, the innermost endothelial cell layer in the arteries, plays a central and dynamic role in maintaining arterial homeostasis and normal functioning of blood vessels. Any injury to the endothelium, by subtle physical or chemical noxious stimuli, triggers a series of pathophysiological processes involved in the development of atherosclerosis and in severe cases blockage of arterial lumen, resulting in life-threatening major cardiovascular diseases in respective organs such as heart attack, stroke, or peripheral artery disease. 

Major bleeding is the most common complication from femoral arterial access for cardiac procedures. Vascular complications from access are more common than complications arising from the angiography itself. The use of ultrasound (US) allows direct visualization of the artery and can potentially reduce the rates of complication in comparison to the use of fluoroscopy alone.

SARS-COV-2, severe acute respiratory syndrome 2, is the cause of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected over 675 million people to date. The SARS-CoV-2 virus enters a host cell by binding its spike protein to the ACE2 receptor. In many cell types, this viral entry process is further facilitated by the activation of the spike protein through a TMPRSS2 receptor. However, due to the limited availability of ACE2.TMPRSS2 cells, researchers have commonly used cells that only express ACE2. This results in low-resolution infectivity data for certain variants of the coronavirus. Our research aimed to optimize an in vitro pseudovirus assay that exclusively relies on ACE2 by increasing viral cell entry and study pseudovirus infectivity by the addition of polybrene.

Exploration of the reactivity between carbenes and anionic borate linkers has led to the development of new ligands with multiple strongly-donating carbene functionalities. These ligands have been previously used for a wide range of catalytic reactions. To expand on this promising class of ligands, we targeted borate-linked multicarbene ligands with different geometries than previously reported.