Crystal Walline

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Verified

Crystal verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at University of North Carolina at Pembroke

During the COVID-19 pandemic, educators were compelled to quickly pivot their face-to-face courses to a hybrid, online, or asynchronous delivery, and to develop learning management (LMS) course websites to seamlessly delivery course content, assignments, assessments, and other instructional tools. Concurrently, textbook publishers are offering LMS-...

In February of 2022, over 125 members of the Advising First-Year Students (AFYS) Advising Community gathered to discuss best practices in advising first-year students. During the discussion, the needs of three different student populations were considered: -At-risk first-year students -Persisting first-year students -High-achieving first-year stud...

Teaching an undergraduate immunology course without a lab component has many challenges. Firstly, a complicated subject must be taught in about half the number of contact hours. Chiefly, the opportunity to reinforce concepts learned from the instructional setting (e.g. classroom, online module, or in situ teaching) by performing hands-on experiment...

Excessive drinking can lead to the development of immune dysfunction. Our aim is to investigate the effect of alcohol on immune activation from circulating peripheral blood monocytes in excessive drinkers (EDs). Twenty-two EDs and healthy controls were enrolled. Time line follow-back was used to quantify the amount of alcohol consumed in the past 3...

Vaccinia virus (VV) has been used globally as a vaccine to eradicate smallpox. Widespread use of this viral vaccine has been tempered in recent years due to its immunoevasive properties, with restrictions prohibiting VV inoculation of individuals with immune deficiencies or atopic skin diseases. VV infection is known to perturb several pathways for...

The nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH) oxidase expressed in phagocytes is a multi-subunit enzyme complex that generates superoxide (O2.−). This radical is an important precursor of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and other reactive oxygen species needed for microbicidal activity during innate immune responses. Inherited defects in NADPH o...

Cytokine responsiveness is a critical component of the ability of cells to respond to the extracellular milieu. Transcription factor-mediated regulation of cytokine receptor expression is a common mode of altering responses to the external environment. We identify the transcription factor Twist1 as a component of a STAT3-induced feedback loop that...

The STAT transcription factor STAT4 is a critical regulator of Th1 differentiation and inflammatory disease. Yet, how STAT4 regulates gene expression is still unclear. In this report, we define a STAT4-dependent sequence of events including histone H3 lysine 4 methylation, Jmjd3 association with STAT4 target loci, and a Jmjd3-dependent decrease in...

Subsets of T helper cells are specialized for the production of specific cytokines, and this specificity is controlled by the function of transcription factors in each subset. Twist1, a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor, is induced by STAT3-activating cytokines and inhibited by TGF-β in Th17 cells. Ectopic Twist1 expression in Th17...

Pulmonary viral infections can exacerbate or trigger the development of allergic airway diseases via multiple mechanisms depending upon the infectious agent. Respiratory vaccinia virus transmission is well established, yet the effects of allergic airway disease on the host response to intra-pulmonary vaccinia virus infection remain poorly defined....

Despite the global eradication of smallpox following widespread vaccination with vaccinia virus (VV), other members of the poxviridae family persist and continue to infect animal and human hosts. Although the lung is the most lethal route of poxvirus infection, there is little known about the local immune response to pulmonary VV infection. Moreove...

Direct allorecognition, i.e., donor lung-derived dendritic cells (DCs) stimulating recipient-derived T lymphocytes, is believed to be the key mechanism of lung allograft rejection. Myeloid (cDCs) and plasmacytoid (pDCs) are believed to have differential effects on T cell activation. However, the roles of each DC type on T cell activation and reject...

Nutraceuticals and phytochemicals are important regulators of human health and diseases. Curcumin is a polyphenolic phytochemical isolated from the rhizome of the plant Curcuma longa (turmeric) that has been traditionally used for the treatment of inflammation and wound healing for centuries. Systematic analyses have shown that curcumin exerts its...

Abstract AIM: To investigate the temporal onset and dynamic interplay of CD4+ T helper cell subsets in experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE). METHODS: EAE was induced in C57BL/6 mice by im�munization with myelin oligodendrocyte glycoprotein peptide p35-55. The clinical signs were scored and the tissue samples and immune cells isolated...

Vaccinia virus (VV) infection in mice is an accepted model to study the pathogenesis of variola virus, the causative agent of human smallpox. Although the lung is a key site of poxvirus infection, there is little known about the local immune response to intrapulmonary VV infection. Additionally, because vaccination with VV is contraindicated in pat...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disorder that affects more than a million people worldwide. The etiology of MS is not known and there is no medical treatment that can cure MS. Earlier studies have shown that peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPARs) agonists ameliorate MS-like disease in experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (E...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disorder that causes paralysis in young adults and affects women more frequently than men. The etiology of MS is not known, but it is generally viewed as an autoimmune disease of the central nervous system (CNS), influenced by genetic and environmental factors. Recent studies have identified interleukin-7 r...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disorder that affects more than a million people world-wide. The aetiology of MS is not known and there is no medical treatment available that can cure MS. Experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (EAE) is a T-cell-mediated autoimmune disease model of MS. The pathogenesis of EAE/MS is a complex process inv...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disorder that affects more than a million people worldwide. The disease usually begins in young adults and affects women more than men. About 30% of MS patients develop clinical paralysis and become wheel chair-bound for the rest of their lives. The etiology of MS is not known and there is no medical treatm...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a neurological disorder that causes chronic paralysis and immense socio-economic problem among young adults. The etiology of MS is not known but it is generally viewed as an autoimmune inflammatory disease of the CNS. Over the past decade, several anti-inflammatory drugs have been developed to control MS symptoms but ther...

Experimental allergic encephalomyelitis (EAE) is a T cell-mediated autoimmune disease model of multiple sclerosis. Signal transducer and activator of transcription 4 (Stat4) is a transcription factor activated by IL-12 and IL-23, two cytokines known to play important roles in the pathogenesis of EAE by inducing T cells to secrete IFN-gamma and IL-1...

The human serotonin transporter (hSERT) regulates the spatial and temporal actions of serotonin (5-HT) neurotransmission by removing 5-HT from the synapse. Previous studies have identified residues in the third transmembrane helix (TMH) that may be important for substrate translocation or antagonist recognition. We identified hSERT residues in TMH...

Due to the complexity of the disease, several hypotheses exist to explain the etiology of depression. The monoamine theory of depression suggests that disruptions in the serotonergic and noradrenergic systems result in depressive symptoms. Therefore, the serotonin transporter (SERT) has become a pharmacological target for treating these symptoms. T...

Due to the complexity of the disease, several hypotheses exist to explain the etiology of depression. The monoamine theory of depression suggests that disruptions in the serotonergic and noradrenergic systems result in depressive symptoms. Therefore, the serotonin transporter (SERT) has become a pharmacological target for treating these symptoms. T...

One of the most prevalent disorders in present society is depression. The development of treatments for this disorder, beginning with the tricyclic antidepressants and leading to the development of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, has focused on compounds that block the function of the serotonin transporter (SERT). In this paper, we have pe...

The serotonin transporter (SERT) is a member of the neurotransmitter sodium-symporter family composed of the monoamine, amino acid, and other transporter subfamilies. SERT regulates the temporal and spatial action of serotonin (5-HT) on pre- and post-synaptic receptors by transporting 5-HT into the presynaptic neuron. SERT is the molecular target o...