Parasitic invasions are recognized as one of the primary factors responsible for decreasing populations of European eel. The aim of the present study was to determine the influence of infestation with the nematode Anguillicoloides crassus on the innate immunity in European eel (Anguilla anguilla). Anguillicoloides crassus parasitizes the swim bladder of this fish. Levels of the following immuno...

Cellular senescence, a form of stable cell cycle arrest that is traditionally associated with tumour suppression, has been recently found to occur during mammalian development. Here, we show that cell senescence is an intrinsic part of the developmental programme in amphibians. Programmed senescence occurs in specific structures during defined time windows during amphibian development. It contr...

Rachel L. Carson studied biology at Johns Hopkins University [4] in Maryland and graduated in 1933 with an MA upon the completion of her thesis, "The Development of the Pronephros during the Embryonic and Early Larval Life of the Catfish (Ictalurus punctatus)." The research that Carson conducted for this thesis project grounded many of the claims and observations she presented in her 1962 book,...

Although a rare disease, bilateral congenital anomalies of the kidney and urinary tract (CAKUT) are leading cause end stage disease in children. Ultrasound-based prenatal prediction postnatal survival CAKUT pregnancies is far from accurate. To improve prediction, we conducted prospective multicenter peptidome analysis amniotic fluid spanning 140 evaluable fetuses with CAKUT. We identified signa...

Mouse Foxc1 (previously Mf1) is a member of the conserved forkhead/winged helix transcription factor gene family. It is expressed in many mesodermal tissues including paraxial mesoderm of the trunk and head, prechondrogenic mesenchyme, branchial arches and developing kidney. Homozygous mutants die perinatally with hydrocephalus and skeletal, cardiovascular, ocular and genitourinary defects. Her...

Drosophila dachshund (dac) interacts with sine oculis (so), eyes absent (eya) and eyeless (ey) to control compound eye development. We have cloned three zebrafish dac homologues, dachA, dachB and dachC, which are expressed widely, in distinct but overlapping patterns. Expression of all three is found in sensory organs, the central nervous system and pectoral fin buds. dachA is also expressed st...

We have identified a cDNA encoding a novel Xenopus winged helix transcription factor termed as XFD-11 (Xenopus fork head domain). The DNA binding domain is most closely related to those of human or murine FREAC-3 (FKHL7/MF-1/FKH-1) proteins. The XFD-11 gene is activated at late blastula/early gastrula and transcription proceeds throughout embryogenesis. Early expression is found in ventral and ...