Beyond Acute Lyme

Vermont has one of the highest rates of Lyme disease infection in the country. There is growing disagreement not only between the medical community and a growing patient population, but also within the medical community itself, around the issue of persistent syndromes that may or may not be related to a Lyme diagnosis. Many patients seek treatment for persistent symptoms outside of physician guidelines for either Post Treatment Lyme Disease or the contentious Chronic Lyme Disease via prolonged courses of IV antibiotics, colloidal silver infusions, electromagnetic frequency treatments, and more. Regardless of the debatable extent of spirochete carnage in vivo, there is a need for effective and compassionate communication between providers and concerned patients. The aim of this project is to nudge this inevitably ongoing conversation in a productive direction, and to create a broader shared awareness between populations at growing odds.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/fmclerk/1572/thumbnail.jp

Safe Driving Attitudes and Behaviors Among Vermont Student Drivers

Distracted driving contributes to approximately 10% of all driver fatalities and 17% of injuries in the US. Vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for teens in the US. Drivers aged 16-19 are 3 times more likely to be involved in fatal crashes than those \u3e 20 years. Increased teen risk is related to attachment to technology, limited driving experience, and an illusion of invincibility. Previous National Highway Traffic Safety Administration assessment of distracted driving attitudes and behaviors does not include significant data on teenage drivers. The goal of this project is to assess safe driving attitudes and behaviors among Vermont Student Drivers.https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/comphp_gallery/1284/thumbnail.jp

Development of a eukaryotic microbial fuel cell using Arxula adeninivorans

The bulk of microbial fuel cell work has been conducted on prokaryotic microorganisms, with eukaryotes considered too sluggish. Access to the electron transport chain in the mitochondrion appeared to be the limiting factor. There are useful eukaryotic microorganisms yet to be investigated in the microbial fuel cell field. Arxula adeninivorans is a dimorphic yeast with a large substrate range and high osmotic and temperature tolerances making it a good candidate for study in a eukaryotic microbial fuel cell. This thesis demonstrated that A. adeninivorans can participate in both mediated and mediator-less electron transfer in a microbial fuel cell, secreting an electrochemically active substance that contributes to the mediator-less power density when KMnO₄ is used in the cathode as the final electron acceptor. A large number of physical, electrochemical and biological factors were investigated with several novel behaviours reported. Different fuel cell configurations, different electrodes, cell immobilization, different cathode reactions, comparisons to different microorganisms, mixed culture microbial fuel cells and gene over-expression were attempted to both increase electrical output and the understanding of the limitations of eukaryotic microbial fuel cells so that they could be overcome. Research was conducted with A. adeninivorans in a large variety of MFC configurations and conditions to map out future work that would be required to create a model for optimal eukaryotic microbial fuel cell performance

Evaluating Transmission Barriers to Escherichia coli x Saccharomyces cerevisiae interkingdom conjugation

Conjugation is a fundamentally important mechanism of horizontal DNA transfer between bacteria, bacteria x archea, and bacteria x eukaryotes. This work has concentrated on conjugation between bacteria x eukaryotes, specifically Escherichia coli x Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Four hypotheses were tested, investigating the barriers to this particular form of DNA transfer. The first investigated if a mutation that altered the cell-surface of the recipient S. cerevisiae could inhibit DNA transfer. The final three utilised a recombination-dependent-conjugation assay to investigate the barrier to DNA transmission through recombination. The hypotheses tested if the frequency of recombination, in this recombination-dependent-conjugation assay, differed when using similar or diverged DNA substrates, if a mismatch repair mutation within the recipient could affect the frequencies of recombination observed, and if the position on the plasmid of the gene of interest affected the frequency of transmission. Transmission of the Ura3 DNA sequence in the recipient S. cerevisiae was used to test all four hypotheses. The cell wall mutants mnn9, knr4, fks1 and kre6 were utilised to investigate if the cell-surface of the recipient could affect the frequency of transmission. The similar and diverged substrates utilised in the investigation of the affect of sequence similarity on recombination were the DNA sequences of ura3 from S. cerevisiae and Saccharomyces carlsbergensis, respectively and the MMR mutants utilised were msh2, pms1 and pol30-52. Cell wall mutants were not found to limit the frequency of transfer once donor-recipient contact was induced through the solid surface mating procedure. Sequence similarity, MMR and the relative position of the ura3 DNA sequence on the conjugative plasmids were shown to have little effect on the frequency of transmission in S. cerevisiae. This suggests that any DNA that enters the nucleus of S. cerevisiae (eukaryotes) can recombine with the chromosome and alter it to the same extent. However, trends within the data also suggest that DNA is transferred into the recipient and then transported to the nucleus to recombine with the chromosome as a single-stranded DNA molecule

Characterisation of yeast microbial fuel cell with the yeast Arxula adeninivorans as the biocatalyst

International audienceYeast microbial fuel cells have received little attention to date. Yeast should be ideal MFC catalyst because they are robust, easily handled, mostly non-pathogenic organisms with high catabolic rates and in some cases a broad substrate spectrum. Here we show that the non-conventional yeast Arxula adeninvorans transfers electrons to an electrode through the secretion of a reduced molecule that is not detectable when washed cells are first resuspended but which accumulates rapidly in the extracellular environment. It is a single molecule that accumulates to a significant concentration. The occurrence of mediatorless electron transfer was first established in a conventional microbial fuel cell and that phenomenon was further investigated by a number of techniques. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) on a yeast pellet shows a single peak at 450mV, a scan rate study showed that the peak was due to a solution species. CVs of the supernatant confirmed a solution species. It appears that, given its other attributes, A. adeninivorans is a good candidate for further investigation as a MFC catalyst