Jason Rodriguez | Eastern Gateway Community College (original) (raw)

Papers by Jason Rodriguez

Viruses

From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers assessed the impact of the disease in te... more From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers assessed the impact of the disease in terms of loss of life, medical load, economic damage, and other key metrics of resiliency and consequence mitigation; these studies sought to parametrize the critical components of a disease transmission model and the resulting analyses were informative but often lacked critical parameters or a discussion of parameter sensitivities. Using SARS-CoV-2 as a case study, we present a robust modeling framework that considers disease transmissibility from the source through transport and dispersion and infectivity. The framework is designed to work across a range of particle sizes and estimate the generation rate, environmental fate, deposited dose, and infection, allowing for end-to-end analysis that can be transitioned to individual and population health models. In this paper, we perform sensitivity analysis on the model framework to demonstrate how it can be used to advance and prioritize rese...

This article cites 63 articles, 41 of which can be accessed free

sequence of Thermofilum pendens reveals an exceptional loss of biosynthetic

: This paper describes a toxicokinetic/dynamic model of inhaled, intravenous, and percutaneous ex... more : This paper describes a toxicokinetic/dynamic model of inhaled, intravenous, and percutaneous exposure to several organophosphates (OPs). The model predicts the efficacy of medical countermeasures via a pharmacokinetic/dynamic model of oxime, anticholinergic, anticonvulsant, and bioscavenger treatment regimens.

Analytica chimica acta, Jan 31, 2016

In the pharmaceutical industry, dextrose is used as an active ingredient in parenteral solutions ... more In the pharmaceutical industry, dextrose is used as an active ingredient in parenteral solutions and as an inactive ingredient (excipient) in tablets and capsules. In order to address the need for more sophisticated analytical techniques, we report our efforts to develop enhanced identification methods to screen pharmaceutical ingredients at risk for adulteration or substitution using field-deployable spectroscopic screening. In this paper, we report our results for a study designed to evaluate the performance of field-deployable Raman and near infrared (NIR) methods to identify dextrose samples. We report a comparison of the sensitivity of the spectroscopic screening methods against current compendial identification tests that rely largely on a colorimetric assay. Our findings indicate that NIR and Raman spectroscopy are both able to distinguish dextrose by hydration state and from other sugar substitutes with 100% accuracy for all methods tested including spectral correlation base...

Journal of Virology, 2003

The V protein of the recently emerged paramyxovirus, Nipah virus, has been shown to inhibit inter... more The V protein of the recently emerged paramyxovirus, Nipah virus, has been shown to inhibit interferon (IFN) signal transduction through cytoplasmic sequestration of cellular STAT1 and STAT2 in high-molecularweight complexes. Here we demonstrate that the closely related Hendra virus V protein also inhibits cellular responses to IFN through binding and cytoplasmic sequestration of both STAT1 and STAT2, but not STAT3. These findings demonstrate a V protein-mediated IFN signal evasion mechanism that is a general property of the known Henipavirus species.

Diagnostic Microbiology and Infectious Disease, 2011

A recent report suggested an association between xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (... more A recent report suggested an association between xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus (XMRV) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). If confirmed, this would suggest that antiretroviral therapy might benefit patients suffering from CFS. We validated a set of assays for XMRV, and evaluated the prevalence of XMRV in a cohort of monozygotic twins discordant for CFS. Stored PBMC were tested with 3 separate PCR assays (one of which was nested) for XMRV DNA, and serum/plasma was tested for XMRV RNA by reverse transcription (RT)-PCR. None of the PBMC samples from the twins with CFS or their unaffected co-twins were positive for XMRV, by any of the assays. One plasma sample, from an unaffected co-twin, was reproducibly positive by RT-PCR. However, serum from the same day was negative, as was a followup plasma sample obtained 2 days after the positive specimen. These data do not support an association of XMRV with CFS.

Journal of the Pennsylvania Academy of Science, 2016

A series of tris(bipyridine)ruthenium(II) chloride ([Ru(bpy)3]Cl2)-sequestered reverse micellar s... more A series of tris(bipyridine)ruthenium(II) chloride ([Ru(bpy)3]Cl2)-sequestered reverse micellar solutions of variable surfactant concentration were examined using fluorescence spectroscopy before and after thermal radical polymerization of the nonpolar phase. The [Ru(bpy)3]Cl2 emission spectra simulated aqueous solution chemical environments irrespective whether the nonpolar phase is liquid or polymerized into a solid. A range of surfactant concentrations were examined. Emission maxima of the reverse micelle solution-sequestered [Ru(bpy)3]Cl2 species are red-shifted with respect to aqueous [Ru(bpy)3]Cl2. The red-shift can be interpreted in the context of increasing chemical environment polarity. Emission maxima of the [Ru(bpy)3]Cl2 species of polymerized nonpolar phase at approximately 600 nm were consistent with [Ru(bpy)3]Cl2 aqueous species. The work represents a pathway to preserve solution-dependent chemical processes of molecular sensors.

PLOS Pathogens

While evidence exists supporting the potential for aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the infect... more While evidence exists supporting the potential for aerosol transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the infectious dose by inhalation remains unknown. In the present study, the probability of infection following inhalation of SARS-CoV-2 was dose-dependent in a nonhuman primate model of inhalational COVID-19. The median infectious dose, assessed by seroconversion, was 52 TCID50 (95% CI: 23–363 TCID50), and was significantly lower than the median dose for fever (256 TCID50, 95% CI: 102–603 TCID50), resulting in a group of animals that developed an immune response post-exposure but did not develop fever or other clinical signs of infection. In a subset of these animals, virus was detected in nasopharyngeal and/or oropharyngeal swabs, suggesting that infected animals without signs of disease are able to shed virus and may be infectious, which is consistent with reports of asymptomatic spread in human cases of COVID-19. These results suggest that differences in exposure dose may be a factor influenci...

Sensors

Quality checks, assessments, and the assurance of food products, raw materials, and food ingredie... more Quality checks, assessments, and the assurance of food products, raw materials, and food ingredients is critically important to ensure the safeguard of foods of high quality for safety and public health. Nevertheless, quality checks, assessments, and the assurance of food products along distribution and supply chains is impacted by various challenges. For instance, the development of portable, sensitive, low-cost, and robust instrumentation that is capable of real-time, accurate, and sensitive analysis, quality checks, assessments, and the assurance of food products in the field and/or in the production line in a food manufacturing industry is a major technological and analytical challenge. Other significant challenges include analytical method development, method validation strategies, and the non-availability of reference materials and/or standards for emerging food contaminants. The simplicity, portability, non-invasive, non-destructive properties, and low-cost of NIR spectromete...

Experimental and Molecular Therapeutics

The American Journal of Cardiology

Journal of Innovations in Cardiac Rhythm Management

Race Ethnicity and Education

The Analyst

Raman mapping is a powerful and emerging tool in characterization of pharmaceuticals and provides... more Raman mapping is a powerful and emerging tool in characterization of pharmaceuticals and provides non-destructive chemical and structural identification with minimal sample preparation. One pharmaceutical form that is suitable but...

G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics

Species of flies in the genus Drosophila differ dramatically in their preferences for mates, but ... more Species of flies in the genus Drosophila differ dramatically in their preferences for mates, but little is known about the genetic or neurological underpinnings of this evolution. Recent advances have been made to our understanding of one case: pheromone preference evolution between the species D. melanogaster and D. simulans. Males of both species are very sensitive to the pheromone 7,11-HD that is present only on the cuticle of female D. melanogaster. In one species this cue activates courtship, and in the other it represses it. This change in valence was recently shown to result from the modification of central processing neurons, rather than changes in peripherally expressed receptors, but nothing is known about the genetic changes that are responsible. In the current study, we show that a 1.35 Mb locus on the X chromosome has a major effect on male 7,11-HD preference. Unfortunately, when this locus is divided, the effect is largely lost. We instead attempt to filter the 159 gen...

International Journal of Pharmaceutics