Soft-shelled turtle egg-white lysozyme was purified and sequenced. Lysozyme was reduced and carboxymethylated to fragment it with trypsin, V8 protease and CNBr. The peptides yielded were purified by RP-HPLC and sequenced. Every trypsin peptide was overlapped by V8 protease peptides and CNBr fragment. The amino acid sequence was compared with other lysozymes. This lysozyme has an extra Gly resid...

In general, the nasal cavity of turtles is divided into two chambers: the upper chamber, lined with the olfactory epithelium containing ciliated olfactory receptor cells, and the lower chamber, lined with the vomeronasal epithelium containing microvillous receptor cells. In the nasal cavity of soft-shelled turtles, however, differences between the upper and lower chamber epithelia are unclear d...

To examine the possible influence of incubation substrate water potential on rigid-shelled chelonian eggs and hatchlings, rigid-shelled eggs from four clutches of Brisbane River turtle (Emydura signata) were incubated buried in vermiculite at water potentials of approximately -100, -350, and -850 kPa, and patterns of egg mass change and hatchling attributes were examined. All eggs hatched succe...