Jillian Blatti

Pasadena City College | PCC · Department of Chemistry

Undergraduate research programs at community colleges maximize their impact through partnerships with baccalaureate-granting institutions, which provide much needed access to subject matter experts, research labs, and funding to underserved students. The program Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity: Promoting Opportunities for Diversity in...

Undergraduate research is a high impact practice that increases success and equity in the chemistry classroom. This is especially significant when preparing students for the professional workforce. Attributes that employers look for in professional workers include resilience, collaboration, and critical thinking skills, all of which undergraduate r...

This paper presents a successful model of preparing community college students for summer Undergraduate Research Experiences (UREs) that may be of interest to other community college faculty. Over the past four years, the Network for Computational Nanotechnology (NCN) summer URE program at Purdue large research University has created URE opportunit...

Systems thinking, interdisciplinary research projects, and creative problem solving are ways to frame modern chemistry curricula to inspire the next generation of scientists, engineers, teachers, and citizens to use their skills and education to create a sustainable future. By integrating planetary boundaries, green chemistry, and the UN sustainabl...

This activity presents a simple method for producing sustainable, nontoxic, and environmentally friendly paints from materials purchased at a local grocery store and offers suggestions for experiments to test the properties of the student-made paints. This activity has been used to engage elementary, middle, and high school students in scientific o...

The fatty acid synthase (FAS) is a conserved primary metabolic enzyme complex capable of tolerating cross-species engineering of domains for the development of modified and overproduced fatty acids. In eukaryotes, acyl-acyl carrier protein thioesterases (TEs) off-load mature cargo from the acyl carrier protein (ACP), and plants have developed TEs f...

The acyclic triazenes 4-[(E)-2-(biphenyl-4-yl)diazenyl]-morpholine (1) and 1,3-bis(biphenyl-4-yl)triazene (2) were prepared and their X-ray crystal structures determined. Compound 1 crystallized in the monoclinic space group P21/c with a = 29.153 (5) Å, b = 6.0444 (14) Å, c = 7.5997 (15) Å, and β = 96.03 (1)°. Compound 2 crystallized as the 1/4 cyc...

Microalgae are a promising feedstock for biodiesel and other liquid fuels due to their fast growth rate, high lipid yields, and ability to grow in a broad range of environments. However, many microalgae achieve maximal lipid yields only under stress conditions hindering growth and providing compositions not ideal for biofuel applications. Metabolic...

Microalgae are a promising feedstock for renewable fuels, and algal metabolic engineering can lead to crop improvement, thus accelerating the development of commercially viable biodiesel production from algae biomass. We demonstrate that protein-protein interactions between the fatty acid acyl carrier protein (ACP) and thioesterase (TE) govern fatt...

Sequence alignment of FatA and FatB TEs with CrTE. Structure-based sequence alignment of FatA TEs from Arabidopsis thaliana (AtTE_A), Brassica napus (BnTE_A), Chlamydomonas reinhardtii TE (CrTE) and FatB TEs from Cuphea hookeriana (ChTE_B1) and (ChTE_B2) and Umbellularia californica (UcTE_B). Conserved residues are highlighted in red and similar re...

Docking of fatty acid PPTs to CrTE. Autodock4 was used to blindly dock various fatty acid-PPTs to CrTE. (A) C16:0-PPT, (B) C16:4-PPT, (C) C18:0-PPT, (D) C18:1-PPT and (E) C18:3-PPT. Left: cartoon representation of CrTE (grey) and top 10 models of substrate as sticks. Right: surface representation of CrTE (grey) and top 10 models of substrate as sti...

Ensemble representation of protein-protein docking of Cr-cACP with ( A ) UcTE, ( B ) ChTE and ( C ) CrTE. (TIF)

Apofication activity of ACP hydrolase on Cr-cACP. L: Benchmark ladder. 1) Ni-NTA purified Cr-cACP (elution 1), 2) Ni-NTA purified Cr-cACP (elution 2), 3 and 4 are crude cell lysates of Cr-cACP expression, 5) apofication of Cr-cACP at t = 1 h, 6) t = 4 h, 7) t = 8 h, and 8) t = 24 h, showing the faster running apo-Cr-cACP being formed upon cleavage...

Textual description of supporting materials and methods. (DOC)

Electrostatic potential maps of modeled Cr-cACP/CrTE and Cr-mACP/CrTE complexes. (A) Cr-cACP (green) docked to CrTE (grey) showing a 13.5 Å distance between conserved serine on Cr-cACP and active site cysteine of CrTE; (B) Cr-mACP (orange) docked to CrTE (grey) showing a 18.8 Å distance between conserved serine on Cr-mACP and active site cysteine o...

Fluorescent loading of C. reinhardtii mACP and crosslinking of Cr-mACP with TEs. (A) crypto-Cr-mACP was formed using CoA -A, -D, -E, Sfp, ATP, and fluorescent pantetheine analogue 1 [S3], validating post translational modification of Cr-mACP. E. coli ACP was modified with 1 as a positive control. Reactions were loaded on an 8% SDS-PAGE gel and visu...

Chlamydomonas reinhardtii strains. (DOC)

C. reinhardtii primers. (DOC)

Structural docking simulation of Cr-mACP to CrTE, UcTE, and ChTE. Docking of C. reinhardtii mitochondrial ACP (Cr-mACP) to thioesterases showing less favorable docking characteristics (<50% of the ACP models docks to the tentative active site of the TEs). (A) UcTE (B) ChTE (C) CrTE. (TIF)

Sequence alignment of ACPs. Structure-based sequence alignment of ACPs from Escherichia coli (Ec), Spinacia oleracea mitochondrial ACP (So-mACP), Spinacia oleracea chloroplastic ACP (So-cACP), Chlamydomonas reinhardtii mitochondrial ACP (Cr-mACP), and Chlamydomonas reinhardtii chloroplastic ACP (Cr-cACP). Conserved serine is indicated by an asterix...

PCR screen to identify Chlamydomonas reinhardtii transformants harboring thioesterases. Initial screening of primary Cr transformants was carried out using PCR to determine clones with proper insertion of exogenous genes into the Cr chloroplast genome, and rescreened to ensure genetic stability. (A) PCR analysis of genomic chloroplast DNA to determ...

Western blot analysis confirming expression of TEs in C. reinhardtii chloroplast. To validate heterologous TE expression in the Cr chloroplast, Western blot analysis was conducted on transgenic Cr strains. Protein was purified via affinity purification using M2 anti-FLAG resin and Western blot was carried out using anti-FLAG antibody. Gel images sh...

Mass spectra of (A) holo-CrACP and (B) apo-CrACP (loss of phosphopantetheine). ESI-MS were recorded in positive mode. ACP-hydrolase (ACPH) from Pseudomonas aeruginosa [S20] was used to convert holo-CrACP to apo-CrACP in vitro, which was confirmed by MS to verify the loss of the pantetheine moiety from ACP. The activity of apo-CrACP was validated us...

Activity-based crosslinking of C. reinhardtii cACP and plant TEs. (A) crypto-Cr-cACP was formed using CoA -A, -D, -E, Sfp, ATP, and chloroacrylic pantetheine analogue 2, and tested for its ability to functionally interact with ChTE and UcTE. Reactions were purified using anti-FLAG resin, eluted with 1 M arginine (pH 3.5), and loaded onto an 8% SDS-...

Thioesterase phylogeny. The phylogenetic relationship between FatA, FatB, and Fat1 TEs was analyzed using a web-based phylogenetic analysis tool [S4]. (A) Phylogram of the relationship between FatA, FatB, and Fat1 TEs, generated by Phylogeny.fr [S4]; (B) Radial representation of the phylogram shown in A. (TIFF)

Strains, plasmids, and restriction sites. (DOC)

Microalgae have emerged as an attractive feedstock for the mass production of renewable transportation fuels due to their fast growth rate, flexible habitat preferences, and substantial oil yields. As an educational tool, a laboratory was developed that mimics emerging algal biofuel technology, including the extraction of algal lipids and transeste...