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Comparative Analysis of Carbohydrate Active Enzymes of Fungal Genomes Across Taxonomic Orders
Get PDFCarbohydrate active enzymes, or CAZymes, are enzymes that are important for the breakdown of carbohydrates. Fungi produce many of these enzymes as they cycle essential nutrients. For this study, we compared the abundance of CAZymes families among fungal genomes from the taxonomic orders Capnodiales, Dothideales, Eurotiales, Filobasidiales, Pleosporales, Tremellales, and Ustilaginales that were isolated from different sources including plant, soil, and food, among others. Our objective was to address the following questions: 1) How does the alpha diversity or number of CAZymes differ between the fungal orders? 2) Are closely-related fungi more likely to have similar CAZyme profiles as compared to distantly-related fungi? 3) Which CAZymes are significantly enriched or depleted between these fungal groups?
Alpha diversity, measured as the effective number of CAZymes, showed that Eurotiales had the largest average number of CAZymes present (79) while Filobasidiales had the least (55). Additionally, we found a correlation of R2 = 0.64 between the effective number of CAZymes and the assembly size of the analysed genomes; however, it was insufficient to explain the differences in CAZymes across orders. Beta diversity analyses visualized with Non-metric Multidimensional Scaling (NMDS) showed clear compositional clustering of the CAZyme profiles among the taxonomic orders, indicating that closely related fungi have similar CAZyme profiles. In contrast, there was no relationship among different sampling sources. While the Glycoside Hydrolase and Carbohydrate-Binding Module CAZymes were relatively similar in enrichment across the seven orders, differential abundance analysis using ANCOM II at 0.7 cut off showed that there were more than 30 differentially abundant CAZymes across different fungal orders. Ustilaginales and Filobasidiales had fewer differentially abundant CAZymes than other groups. Auxiliary Activities (AA) were noticeably more enriched in the Eurotiales, Capnodiales, and Pleosporales orders, and the Carbohydrate Esterase (CE) CAZymes had lower overall abundances across the groups. CAZymes are important for microbes, and these results indicate that different fungal orders have evolved to have different sets of them, likely due to ecological specialization or adaptation to specific niches. The fact that we did not see differences in CAZyme profiles across environmental sources suggests that they do not evolve and change quickly enough to be distinct among closely-related species growing in different habitats
Translating a Storybook into Spanish: From \u3cem\u3eWilma on the Wing\u3c/em\u3e to \u3cem\u3eWilma en la ala\u3c/em\u3e
Get PDFThe main objective of this project was to properly translate a children’s book from English to Spanish. Boise State graduate, Anna Connington, previously wrote and illustrated a science storybook for local school children. Connington’s book describes the migration of a warbler from Alaska to Mexico with a stopover in Boise, Idaho adding a local example of migration that fosters a deeper connection for local children. But the original book was not accessible to Spanish-speaking students. With many different dialects and variances between countries, this book focused on Mexican Spanish since that is the largest group in Idaho. My work consisted of directly translating the story into Spanish while minimizing any differences between the two languages that may change the overall delivery of the story. The book will be distributed to Spanish speaking visitors at Intermountain Bird Observatory outreach events and sent to classrooms throughout the Treasure Valley to be utilized by Spanish speaking and bilingual students
Self and Peer Assessments of Teamwork: Exploring Evaluation Sources, Domains, and Timing
Get PDFOur study examines the relationship between these evaluation methods using a large sample of undergraduate students working in small, cross-disciplinary teams to better understand how teammates rate themselves and each other. Students completed self- and peer evaluations of their teamwork behaviors at three different intervals during the semester while working on an assigned team project. To assess their own and their teammates’ behaviors, students completed an online survey including items representing five teamwork domains: 1) contribution to the team, 2) interaction with teammates, 3) monitoring progress/keeping the team on track, 4) expecting and addressing issues of quality work, and 5) having relevant knowledge, skills, and abilities. Results indicated a significant main effect of the evaluation domain and timing of assessments, suggesting that ratings varied on different questions and over the assessment period. Ratings focused on team interactions were significantly higher than the other domains, and ratings given for the final assessment were higher than ratings for the first and second assessments. Given our results show that spending more time interacting with teammates leads to higher ratings, we recommend instructors assign substantial team projects and maintain small, consistent groups throughout the semester to improve team processes
Traditional versus Modern: A Study of Linguistics in Literature
Get PDFThis ethnography addresses the changing of definitions of literary terms, primarily with gendered definitions—how writers characterize masculine and feminine traits in regards to fictional characters, and how these changes reflect the real world. Understanding the shift in longstanding definitions of gender, masculinity, and femininity in the literary sense, we will have a better grasp at understanding them in society. I have been studying writing groups for the last 3 weeks, positing questions on how writers either challenge or conform to traditional definitions. I have observed both amicable and controversial responses of varying degrees, which has brought me to the realization that many writers have embraced changes to traditionally gendered language. This study will serve to understand the current climate surrounding gender, gender roles and expectations, and acceptance of how gender is utilized in fiction writing. This will also serve as a reflection on now society treats gender roles, and masculine and feminine traits
What was I Made from (Angle 2)
No full texthttps://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/mfa_images_2025/1033/thumbnail.jp
What was I Made from (Angle 3)
No full texthttps://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/mfa_images_2025/1032/thumbnail.jp
\u3cem\u3eDiscordant\u3c/em\u3e, \u3cem\u3eWhat was I Made from\u3c/em\u3e, and \u3cem\u3eBy Hand / with Time\u3c/em\u3e
No full texthttps://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/mfa_images_2025/1023/thumbnail.jp
Burn Severity Impacts on Nutrient Availability Through a Soil Profile from the Wapiti Fire
No full textWildfires can cause drastic disturbances in the biogeochemical cycles of the landscapes they affect, altering factors such as soil nutrient availability and water chemistry. The ignition of organic material remineralizes nutrients, making them more available for uptake or transport. However, the exact transformation of nutrients in soils and their potential to be transported to downstream systems can be highly dependent on biota, landscape characteristics, and climate. As a result, this project aims to identify the relationship between burn severity and available nutrient concentrations in soils with high likelihood of being transported to downstream systems. The Wapiti Fire, which primarily burned in the watershed of the South Fork Payette River, burned from July to mid-October 2024. We collected surface and subsurface soil samples from within the burn as well as control samples from adjacent areas. We performed nutrient extractions of each soil sample and analyzed them using standard methods, resulting in per-gram concentrations of nitrate, phosphorous, and ammonia. We found that surface soils have greater nutrient concentrations than the subsurface, and that the lowest concentrations are in the stream channel samples. We expect to see a positive relationship between soil nutrient content and burn severity, and for the concentrations of control samples to be an order of magnitude below their burned counterparts. The relationship between burn severity and degree of remineralization will allow us to investigate how post-burn landscape characteristics impact downstream water quality. The chemically altered water exiting burned watersheds can impact the environmental health of downstream ecosystems as nutrients increase primary productivity and change food web dynamics, affecting fish populations and reservoir chemistry. Beyond fish health, the water quality of downstream reservoirs is essential to the health and well-being of humans and animals alike
Virtual Reality for Improving One-Class Classification Accuracy on Pharmaceutical and Medical Data
Get PDFVirtual reality (VR) is quickly expanding its jurisdiction in terms of usability in classrooms and professional settings. In this poster, VR is used as an interface where the user can perform one-class classification (OCC) to make sample classification decisions producing higher accuracy results than an autonomous ML algorithm. This VR practice, a branch of the larger scientific domain termed immersive analytics, takes advantage of a human’s innate ability to recognize patterns and solve problems when faced with novel situations, something that machine learning (ML) and large language models struggle with. One-class classification is an important scenario that arises in many fields, including for medical diagnostics and pharmaceutical product activity assessments as examples. For this poster, VR is especially used to classify difficult target samples (grey samples) from three data sets: predicting carbonic anhydrase inhibitor activity in drug compounds, assessing breast cancer using fine needle aspiration on breast masses, and identifying cancer patients from inductively coupled plasma samples. For each dataset, the training samples and target samples are represented in VR by abstract glyph objects with visual features representing characteristic information about each sample’s similarity to each other. By identifying patterns among these encoded features, the user is able to make a decision about source class membership. Results show the aforementioned grey samples can easily be misclassified by an autonomous algorithm, while VR can instead be used to correctly classify them using human intuition and cognitive reasoning, increasing classification accuracy
The Gut Microbiome and How It Changes with TNF-α and Farnesol
No full textFarnesol is a natural isoprenoid that has been shown to have anti-inflammatory effects and reduce immune cell infiltration into the central nervous system and conferring protection in a mouse model of multiple sclerosis (MS). Furthermore, farnesol treatment positively affected the composition of the gut microbiome in mice. Interestingly, the gut microbiome can regulate neuroinflammation and has been shown to be altered in patients with MS and animal models. Moreover, intestinal barrier disruption occurs in models of MS. Heightened inflammatory cytokines can cause degradation in the intestinal lining. We are investigating how using farnesol can help with gut microbiome dysbiosis caused by inflammatory cytokines associated with neuroinflammation and MS. We used an in vitro microbiome culture obtained from non-treated mice and quantified colonies grown in the presence of the cytokine TNF-alpha with and without FOL and assessed their effects on microbial growth