Date of Graduation
12-2017
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science in Microelectronics-Photonics (MS)
Degree Level
Graduate
Department
Microelectronics-Photonics
Advisor/Mentor
Nalley, Lawton L.
Committee Member
Dixon, Bruce L.
Second Committee Member
Chaminuka, Petronella
Third Committee Member
Melichova, Katarina
Keywords
E. coli; Silver ions; Super resolution microscopy
Abstract
Histone-like nucleoid structuring proteins (HNS) play significant roles in shaping the chromosomal DNA, regulation of transcriptional networks in microbes, as well as bacterial responses to environmental changes such as temperature fluctuations. In this work, the intracellular organization of HNS proteins in E. coli bacteria was investigated utilizing super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, which surpasses conventional microscopy by 10–20 fold in spatial resolution. More importantly, the changes of the spatial distribution of HNS proteins in E. coli, by addition of silver ions into the growth medium were explored. To quantify the spatial distribution of HNS in bacteria and its changes, an automatic method based on Voronoi diagram was implemented. The HNS proteins localized in super-resolution fluorescence microscopy were segmented and clustered based on several quantitative parameters, such as molecular areas, molecular densities, and mean inter-molecular distances of the k-th rank, all of which were computed from the Voronoi diagrams. These parameters, as well as the associated clustering analysis, allowed us to quantify how the spatial organization of HNS proteins responds to silver, and provided insight into understanding how microbes adapt to new environments.
Citation
Challapalli, S. D. (2017). Developing Algorithms for Quantifying the Super Resolution Microscopic Data: Applications to the Quantification of Protein-Reorganization in Bacteria Responding to Treatment by Silver Ions. Graduate Theses and Dissertations Retrieved from https://scholarworks.uark.edu/etd/2601
