17 Beta-Estradiol, Integrins, and Synaptic Proteins

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Foremost, I would like to sincerely express my gratitude to my mentor Dr. James Simpkins for his continued support, encouragement, sound advice and for his strategic ideas that contributed to the betterment of my thesis work and helped me meet my timelines. This work would not have been possible without him. Also, I would like to sincerely appreciate Dr. Simpkins for his kind and compassionate nature that will always be an inspiration to me. I would like to sincerely thank my committee members Dr. Shaohua Yang and Dr. Nathalie Sumien for their kind support and guidance throughout my thesis work. I am especially grateful to Dr. Sumien for teaching me some of the basic laboratory techniques and giving me moral strength during the difficult times. I would also like to thank Dr. Ladislav Dory for his support and cooperation as my university member. I would like to thank Sue Yi for teaching me and helping me with all the animal procedures in this work. Her guidance has helped me solve many problems in my work. I also want to thank Pil Kim for teaching me some of the basic laboratory procedures and for offering me a helping hand whenever I needed. I wish to thank all the members and staff of Dr. Simpkins laboratory and all my friends at UNTHSC for providing me a friendly environment to work in. Lastly, but most importantly, I would like to thank my beloved husband Kranti for his support and encouragement that enabled me to complete this thesis. Finally, I have to thank my parents for their unconditional love and support in everything I do.