Use of primary culture cells has been limited by the inability to purify most types of cells, particularly cells from early developmental stages. In whole animal cell sorting (WACS), live cells derived from animals harboring a lacZ transgene are purified according to their level of beta-galactosidase expression with a fluorogenic beta-galactosidase substrate and fluorescence-activated cell sort...

Plans last year by the UK government to block the proposals by researchers to create human–animal hybrid embryos for stem-cell research were withdrawn this spring as the government proposed new mechanisms to consider the issue. Researchers want to create such hybrids because they can provide valuable stem cells to allow researchers to study the development of many incurable diseases, which the ...

Inverted amphibian embryos were employed for an analysis of pattern formation in early embryogenesis. Axolotl (Ambystoma) and Xenopus eggs were inverted prior to the first cleavage division and permitted to develop upside down to the early gastrulation stage. In both cases the cleavage patterns of the animal and vegetal hemispheres were reversed. By gastrulation, however, developmental arrest b...

introduction: embryonic stem (es) cells are pluripotent cells derived from the inner cell mass of blastocysts. these cells are appropriate for creation of animal models of human genetic diseases, the study of gene functions in vivo and differentiation into specific types as potential therapeutic agents for several diseases. we describe here production of transgenic chimeric mouse blastocysts by...

We have used whole-mount immunofluorescence microscopy of late-stage Xenopus laevis oocytes and early embryos to examine the organization of their cortical cytokeratin systems. In both mature oocytes and early embryos, there is a distinct animal-vegetal polarity in cytokeratin organization. In mature (stage-VI) oocytes, the cytokeratin filaments of the vegetal region form a unique, almost geode...

It is demonstrated here that the ability of injected Xwnt8 RNA to trigger mesoderm formation in Xenopus presumptive ectoderm (animal caps) depends on the time of explantation. Animal caps isolated from Xwnt8 injected embryos at the late blastula/early gastrula stages differentiate mesodermal tissues whereas caps isolated from early blastula do not. This finding suggests that an endogenous signa...