Megan Thompson

Oyster River High School

Plants have the capacity to sense and adapt to environmental factors using the phytohormone auxin as a major regulator of tropism and development. Among these responses, gravitropism is essential for plant roots to grow downward in the search for nutrients and water. We discovered a new mutant allele of the auxin efflux transporter PIN2 that reveal...

The climate change related decline of shallow (<30 m) coral reef ecosystems has been driven by the mortality of scleractinian corals caused primarily by the phenomenon known as “coral bleaching.” But despite pervasive phase shifts and macroalgal dominance on many coral reefs, some coral species have persisted. One of those species is Montastraea ca...

The softshell Mya arenaria is an ecologically and commercially important bivalve mollusc that develops a fatal cancer known as disseminated neoplasia or hemocyte leukemia. This cancer, like many human cancers, involves the master control gene of apoptosis, p53. This gene is also known to interact with retrotransposons, and a growing body of evidenc...

Whatman FTA® Cards are a fast and efficient method for capturing and storing nucleic acids but can be cost-prohibitive for large numbers of samples. We developed a method that substitutes a readily-available cellulose matrix and homemade washing buffer for commercial FTA® Cards and FTA® Purification Reagent. This method is suitable for long-term st...

Whatman FTA ®Cards are a fast and efficient method for capturing and storing nucleic acids but are cost-prohibitive for some researchers. We developed a method that substitutes readily-available cellulose-based paper and homemade washing buffer for commercial FTA ®Cards and FTA ®Purification Reagent. This method is suitable for long-term storage of...

Altered peptide ligands (APLs) with enhanced binding to MHC class I can increase the CD8(+) T cell response to native Ags, including tumor Ags. In this study, we investigate the influence of peptide-MHC (pMHC) stability on recruitment of tumor Ag-specific CD8(+) T cells through cross-priming. Among the four known H-2(b)-restricted CD8(+) T cell det...

Mechanisms that regulate the recruitment and the accumulation of T cells can impact the magnitude of determinant-specific responses. In this study, we demonstrate that peptide-MHC stability is a regulator of CD8+ T cell cross-priming. We find that increasing the kinetic stability of pMHC for an immunorecessive determinant from SV40 large T antigen,...

CD8+ T-cell responses are often multivalent, directed toward epitopes contained in one or several proteins. The response to Simian virus 40 large-tumor (T) antigen is directed toward four H-2b restricted epitopes (designated sites I, II/III, IV and V). Site V is immunorecessive since specific T cells are not detected following immunization unless t...