Apaf1 has been studied hitherto for its key role in regulating the formation of the apoptotic core machinery, the apoptosome, to induce programmed cell death. Apaf1 involvement in orchestrating this process during embryonic development has been widely documented and constitutes a breakthrough in developmental biology. In this review, we aim to highlight the origin of Apaf1 discoveries and how f...

Luc Bovens, in his 2006 article, argues that it can be shown that the 'rhythm' method of birth control results in a larger number of embryonic deaths than the IUD, the morning after pill or the combination oral contraceptive pill, just so long as one accepts his three 'plausible' assumptions. In this brief response I will argue that Boven's third assumption is not plausible when one takes into ...

Maternal cigarette smoking during pregnancy represents the most prevalent exposure to a suspected neuroteratogen, nicotine. Although animal models have demonstrated brain cell loss and synaptic abnormalities after prenatal nicotine exposure, the multiple effects of nicotine on the maternal-fetal unit make it difficult to prove that nicotine itself is a neuroteratogen. In the current study, whol...

In Drosophila melanogaster, combinatorial activities of four death genes, head involution defective (hid), reaper (rpr), grim, and sickle (skl), have been known to play crucial roles in the developmentally regulated programmed cell death (PCD) of various tissues. However, different expression patterns of the death genes also suggest distinct functions played by each. During early metamorphosis,...

Smyd1/Bop is an evolutionary conserved histone methyltransferase previously shown by conventional knockout to be critical for embryonic heart development. To further explore the mechanism(s) in a cell autonomous context, we conditionally ablated Smyd1 in the first and second heart fields of mice using a knock-in (KI) Nkx2.5-cre driver. Robust deletion of floxed-Smyd1 in cardiomyocytes and the o...

The events which occur in the death of visceromotor neurons of the cervical region of the chick embryo's spinal cord have been analyzed by electron microscopy. These normal degenerative events are compared with those in the lumbosacral cord where nerve cell death was induced by removal of peripheral organs. The initial set of degenerative changes include a decrease in nuclear size, the clumping...

NECDIN belongs to the type II Melanoma Associated Antigen Gene Expression gene family and is located in the Prader-Willi Syndrome (PWS) critical region. Necdin-deficient mice develop symptoms of PWS, including a sensory and motor deficit. However, the mechanisms underlying the motor deficit remain elusive. Here, we show that the genetic ablation of Necdin, whose expression is restricted to post...

Human embryonic stem cells (hESC) present a novel platform for in vitro investigation of the early embryonic cellular response to ionizing radiation. Thus far, no study has analyzed the genome-wide transcriptional response to ionizing radiation in hESCs, nor has any study assessed their ability to form teratomas, the definitive test of pluripotency. In this study, we use microarrays to analyze ...

Central congenital hypothyroidism (CCH) is more prevalent in children born to women with hyperthyroidism during pregnancy, suggesting a role for thyroid hormone (TH) in the development of central thyroid regulation. Using the zebrafish embryo as a model for thyroid axis development, we have characterized the ontogeny of negative feedback regulation of thyrotrope function and examined the effect...

In this study, we examined the effects of non-thermal dielectric barrier discharge plasma on embryonic development in chicken eggs in order to determine the optimal level of plasma exposure for the promotion of embryonic growth. We exposed developing chicken embryos at either Hamburger-Hamilton (HH) stage 04 or HH 20 to plasma at voltages of 11.7 kV to 27.6 kV. Our results show exposure at 11.7...