Installation as a Sensory Vessel

The tectonic plates of earth are in constant movement, floating on magma. The earth cracks and presses, creating mountain ranges and valleys. Water rushes in filling the crevasses, changing jagged bedrock into smooth curves, turning the seabed into a dry salt covered desert. The shift of the earth can be felt and the object-hood of a mountain range cannot be denied. Our origins are buried deep in the earth, creating a relationship between the self and the flesh of existence. The sensing matter of humanity is apodictic; confirmation is received from the nervous system as it interacts with primal environments, symbols, textures, and sounds. This information is processed phenomenologically, shaping how we think, communicate, and develop. As our contemporary minds grow further away from our intuition, we must look to the roots of our origin stories and how they merge withour modern sense of the sublime. I connect our contemporary phenomenological awareness to the primal origins of Earth, and humanity by utilizing video mapping, sound, sculptural paper-making and installation. Through this connection, I create sensory experiences to increase the viewer's awareness to their physical body and its causation

A General, Symmetry-Based Approach for the Assembly of Proteins into Nanoscale Polyhedra.

The assembly of individual protein subunits into large-scale symmetrical structures is widespread in Nature and confers unique biological properties which have potential applications in nano-technology and medicine. While efforts to functionalize and repurpose existing protein complexes have been mainly successful, designing well-defined de novo protein complexes remains an unsolved problem. A major challenge in engineering de novo symmetrical assemblies has been to design interactions between the protein subunits so that they specifically assemble into the desired structure. Prior de novo protein cages have been developed with moderate success, but suffer from a lack of generalizability and require significant computational effort and screening of mutant fusion proteins. The design and optimization of a simple, generalizable approach to designing novel fusion proteins which assemble into cage-like structures will be the subject of this dissertation. We show that by genetically fusing a C4-symmetric coiled-coil to the C-terminus of a C3-symmetric trimeric protein via a short, flexible linker, we can assemble a well-defined 24-subunit protein cage with octahedral symmetry. The flexible nature of these assemblies alleviates the need for rigorous interface modeling, requiring only minimal computation to determine the length of the linker sequence. This is the first de novo designed symmetrical protein complex to incorporate a C4 symmetry element, and we anticipate this method can be applied to a wider variety of proteins and symmetries, which may open up a new avenue of research into designer protein cages with unique, built-in functionalities.PHDChemistryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/120840/1/sciore_1.pd

Protein assemblies: nature-inspired and designed nanostructures

Ordered protein assemblies are attracting interest as next-generation biomaterials with a remarkable range of structural and functional properties, leading to potential applications in biocatalysis, materials templating, drug delivery and vaccine development. This Review covers ordered protein assemblies including protein nanowires/nanofibrils, nanorings, nanotubes, designed two- and three-dimensional ordered protein lattices and protein-like cages including polyhedral virus-like cage structures. The main focus is on designed ordered protein assemblies, in which the spatial organization of the proteins is controlled by tailored noncovalent interactions (including metal ion binding interactions, electrostatic interactions and ligand–receptor interactions among others) or by careful design of modified (mutant) proteins or de novo constructs. The modification of natural protein assemblies including bacterial S-layers and cage-like and rod-like viruses to impart novel function, e.g. enzymatic activity, is also considered. A diversity of structures have been created using distinct approaches, and this Review provides a summary of the state-of-the-art in the development of these systems, which have exceptional potential as advanced bionanomaterials for a diversity of applications

A context model for semantic mediation in Web services composition

This paper presents a context-driven approach that aims at supporting semantic mediation between composed Web services. Despite the widespread adoption of Web services by the IT community, innovative solutions are needed in order to overcome the challenging issue that relates to the semantic disparity of exchanged data. Indeed, there is a lack of means for interpreting these data according to the contextual requirements of each Web service. The context-driven approach suggests two steps. The first step consists of developing a model for anchoring context to data flowing between Web services. In the second step, we use this model to support the semantic mediation between Web services engaged in a composition. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006

Symmetryâ Directed Selfâ Assembly of a Tetrahedral Protein Cage Mediated by de Novoâ Designed Coiled Coils

The organization of proteins into new hierarchical forms is an important challenge in synthetic biology. However, engineering new interactions between protein subunits is technically challenging and typically requires extensive redesign of proteinâ protein interfaces. We have developed a conceptually simple approach, based on symmetry principles, that uses short coiledâ coil domains to assemble proteins into higherâ order structures. Here, we demonstrate the assembly of a trimeric enzyme into a wellâ defined tetrahedral cage. This was achieved by genetically fusing a trimeric coiledâ coil domain to its C terminus through a flexible polyglycine linker sequence. The linker length and coiledâ coil strength were the only parameters that needed to be optimized to obtain a high yield of correctly assembled protein cages.Geometry lesson: A modular approach for assembling proteins into largeâ scale geometric structures was developed in which coiledâ coil domains acted as â twist tiesâ to facilitate assembly. The geometry of the cage was specified primarily by the rotational symmetries of the coiled coil and building block protein and was largely independent of protein structural details.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138862/1/cbic201700406_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138862/2/cbic201700406.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/138862/3/cbic201700406-sup-0001-misc_information.pd

Oestrogen is important for maintenance of cartilage and subchondral bone in a murine model of knee osteoarthritis

Introduction: Oestrogen depletion may influence onset and/or progression of osteoarthritis. We investigated in an ovariectomized mouse model the impact of oestrogen loss and oestrogen supplementation on articular cartilage and subchondral bone in tibia and patella, and assessed bone changes in osteoarthritis development.Methods: C3H/HeJ mice were divided into four groups: sham-operated, oestrogen depletion by ovariectomy (OVX), OVX with estradiol supplementation (OVX+E) and OVX with bisphosphonate (OVX+BP). Each mouse had one knee injected with low-dose iodoacetate (IA), and the contralateral knee was injected with saline. Cartilage was analysed histologically 12 weeks postsurgery; bone changes were monitored over time using in vivo micro-computed tomography.Results: In tibiae, OVX alone failed to induce cartilage damage, but OVX and IA combination significantly induced cartilage damage. In patellae, OVX alone induced significant cartilage damage, whic

Systemic administration of IGF-I enhances healing in collagenous extracellular matrices: evaluation of loaded and unloaded ligaments

BACKGROUND: Insulin-like growth factor-I (IGF-I) plays a crucial role in wound healing and tissue repair. We tested the hypotheses that systemic administration of IGF-I, or growth hormone (GH), or both (GH+IGF-I) would improve healing in collagenous connective tissue, such as ligament. These hypotheses were examined in rats that were allowed unrestricted activity after injury and in animals that were subjected to hindlimb disuse. Male rats were assigned to three groups: ambulatory sham-control, ambulatory-healing, and hindlimb unloaded-healing. Ambulatory and hindlimb unloaded animals underwent surgical disruption of their knee medial collateral ligaments (MCLs), while sham surgeries were performed on control animals. Healing animals subcutaneously received systemic doses of either saline, GH, IGF-I, or GH+IGF-I. After 3 weeks, mechanical properties, cell and matrix morphology, and biochemical composition were examined in control and healing ligaments. RESULTS: Tissues from ambulatory animals receiving only saline had significantly greater strength than tissue from saline receiving hindlimb unloaded animals. Addition of IGF-I significantly improved maximum force and ultimate stress in tissues from both ambulatory and hindlimb unloaded animals with significant increases in matrix organization and type-I collagen expression. Addition of GH alone did not have a significant effect on either group, while addition of GH+IGF-I significantly improved force, stress, and modulus values in MCLs from hindlimb unloaded animals. Force, stress, and modulus values in tissues from hindlimb unloaded animals receiving IGF-I or GH+IGF-I exceeded (or were equivalent to) values in tissues from ambulatory animals receiving only saline with greatly improved structural organization and significantly increased type-I collagen expression. Furthermore, levels of IGF-receptor were significantly increased in tissues from hindlimb unloaded animals treated with IGF-I. CONCLUSION: These results support two of our hypotheses that systemic administration of IGF-I or GH+IGF-I improve healing in collagenous tissue. Systemic administration of IGF-I improves healing in collagenous extracellular matrices from loaded and unloaded tissues. Growth hormone alone did not result in any significant improvement contrary to our hypothesis, while GH + IGF-I produced remarkable improvement in hindlimb unloaded animals