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Date:  Mon, July 03, 2017
Time:  10:00am
Location:  Holmes Hall 389
Speaker:  Kainalu Matthews, MS Candidate

This thesis presents two separate research projects with an emphasis on developmental biology.
Maternal obesity increases the risk for perinatal complications and predisposes for adult disease. Glucose is one of the main nutrients for a fetus, and it has been shown that the placental Glut1 glucose transporter is upregulated (produced in greater quantities) in obese mothers. By employing sonoporation, we can deliver plasmids directly to placental cells to regulate the glut1 transporter. This work highlights the steps that were taken to optimize the experimental condition such as the ultrasound parameters for placental sonoporation in mice.
Viability testing of embryos for bovine and human in vitro fertilization remains a challenge. The current procedure is to biopsy the blastocyst cells by first puncturing a hole in the embryo, then cultivating two cells from the blastocyst. The cells give information about the possible aneuploidi’s, or an irregular number of chromosomes within a cell, which may exist within the blastocyst. Impedance spectroscopy is a possible alternative to this highly invasive technique. This work looks at impedance spectroscopy employed for the embryos of zebrafish and Artemia cysts.