Masters Thesis

Characterization of organic chalcone 17 resistant caenorhabditis elegans mutant

Plant Parasitic Nematodes (PPNs) are a challenging problem in today's agriculture causing an annual loss of about 157 billion dollars (Li et al., 2015). Until recently, methyl bromide was the most used agent for controlling PPNs. However, methyl bromide is now not preferred because of its high toxicity (Li et al., 2015). This establishes a problem by losing a way to control these PPNs. In order to effectively kill these PPNs, Dr. Calderón-Urrea's laboratory used Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) as a model organism and identified certain chalcones as effective nematicidal agents (Attar, 2011). Chalcones are organic chemical compounds found to be effective in killing the reference strain used in the ACU laboratory (PD4251) of C. elegans (Attar, 2011). For the purposes of this thesis the PD4251 strain, which contains the green fluorescence protein (GFP), is noted as the reference strain. Currently the lab has found three chalcones, 17, 25, and 30, that are effective in killing the reference strain, and although the mechanism behind the chalcones' mode of action is unknown, research in the lab suggests these three chalcones may target different biochemical pathways in the nematode.

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