At first sight, adult physicians may feel that intra-uterine lung development is of little interest and importance to them. Paradoxically however, the developing lung impacts more directly on adult practice during foetal life than at any time until the foetus becomes an adult; this is truly an area of interface between adult and paediatric pulmonologists. The lung develops within a foetus which...

I T has been known for many years that chilling at sensitive stages of embryonic or larval life profoundly affects the development of cold-blooded animals. For instance, the wing pattern of butterflies can be changed by cooling their pupae; the central European tortoiseshell, Vanessa urticae, treated in this way emerges in a form closely resembling the arctic species V. polaris. Drosophila and ...

The growth, changes in shape, topography and relation to the peritoneum of the descending colon were assessed on the basis of material taken from 178 foetuses of both sexes, aged from 72 to 236 days of pregnancy. The statistical analysis method demonstrated that the descending colon growth process occurs about a month earlier in female foetuses as compared to male ones. From the statistical poi...

This paper will deal mainly with three trace elements, zinc, copper and iron. I shall first discuss their transfer to the foetus, their combination and concentration in the serum on both sides of the placenta and their accumulation in the foetal body. I shall then pass on to the requirements and intakes of the full-term infant during the period after birth while it is living on milk, and finall...

Knowledge of the movement of the gut in the mammalian foetus is mainly derived from observations on small laboratory animals. Yanase (1907) made a systematic study of pre-natal intestinal movement in the guinea-pig, and observed that the appearance of peristalsis coincided with the time of development of the longitudinal muscle of the gut, at about the 27th day of gestation. At the stage when c...

The aim of study is to investigate the development of the anal canal in human embryos and foetuses. In embryos at stage 19 the boundary between the ectodermal and endodermal linings of the anal canal is located just below the level of the internal anal sphincter muscle. Histological sections showed that the first signs of anal columns are observed in embryos at stage 21 (51 days).

In the past years, cardiovascular progenitor cells have been isolated from the human heart and characterized. Up to date, no studies have been reported in which the developmental potential of foetal and adult cardiovascular progenitors was tested simultaneously. However, intrinsic differences will likely affect interpretations regarding progenitor cell potential and application for regenerative...

Cellular proliferation of rat glioma C6 BU1 cells in tissue culture is dependent on the presence of either calf or foetal-calf serum in the medium. Foetal-calf serum stimulated a high-affinity GTPase in membranes derived from C6 BU1 cells. Pretreatment of the cells with pertussis toxin decreased the high-affinity GTPase activity substantially, and attenuated the foetal-calf-serum-stimulated inc...