In contrast to most other human endogenous retroviral families, various HERV-K members have open reading frames that code for functional viral proteins which can form noninfectious particles in some germ cell tumors. The HERV-K viral genes are highly transcribed in germ cell tumors but are transcribed to lower or undetectable levels in most other tissue and tumor types. To further analyze the e...

Cells originating from the germ cell lineage retain the remarkable property under special culture conditions to give rise to cells with embryonic stem cell (ESC) properties, such as the multipotent adult germline stem cells (maGSCs) derived from adult mouse testis. To get an insight into the mechanisms that control pluripotency and differentiation in these cells, we studied how differences obse...

Vesicular stomatitis virus glycoprotein G-pseudotyped mouse retroviral vectors have been used as mutagens for a large-scale insertional mutagenesis screen in the zebra fish. To reproducibly generate high-titer virus stocks, we devised a method for rapidly selecting cell lines that can yield high-titer viruses and isolated a producer cell line that yields virus at a high titer on zebra fish embr...

Background: Germ cell development processes are influenced by soluble factors and intercellular signaling events between them and the neighboring somatic cells. More insight into the molecular biology of the germ cell development from embryonic stem (ES) cells and investigation of appropriate factors, specifically those targeting differentiation process, is of great importance. In this study, w...

Synchronous primary intracranial germ cell tumors are rare. Only 5-10% of all germ cell tumors are found as synchronous lesion in pineal and suprasellar region. They are also known by the entity "double mid-line atypical teratoma". An 11-year-old male child presented with polyuria, polydipsia and features of raised intracranial tension. CT scan head revealed well-defined homogenously enhancing ...

Background: Anabolic-androgenic steroids (AAS) are used at high doses by athletes for improving athletic ability, physical appearance and muscle mass. Unfortunately, the abuse of these agents has significantly increased. It has been established that exercise and high doses of AAS may influence the hypothalamic-pituitary gonadal (H-P-G) axis, which can in turn affect the testicular apoptosis. Ho...

Production of specialized cells from precursors depends on a tightly regulated sequence of proliferation and differentiation steps. In the gonad of Drosophila melanogaster, the daughters of germ line stem cells (GSC) go through precisely four rounds of transit amplification divisions to produce clusters of 16 interconnected germ line cells before entering a stereotypic differentiation cascade. ...

Gonadal dysgenesis resulting in primary infertility is one of the most common features of Turner syndrome. There have been a number of cases described of pregnancy in 45,X subjects, but whether or not the fertility is associated with a 46,XX cell line in the germ cells is not known. We describe a 45,X/46,X,psu idic(Xq) female with normal fertility, in whom a cryptic 46,XX cell line was found in...