BACKGROUND When chromatin diminution occurs during a cell division a portion of the chromatin is eliminated, resulting in daughter cells with a smaller amount of genetic material. In the parasitic roundworms Ascaris and Parascaris, chromatin diminution creates a genetic difference between the soma and the germline. However, the function of chromatin diminution remains a mystery, because the vas...

During the early cleavage period of Ascaris suum , chromatin diminution takes place in the somatic founder cells. In the process of chromatin diminution numerous heterochromatic blocks, consisting predominantly of highly repeated DNA, are discarded during mitotic anaphase and are later on digested in the cytoplasm. Very little is known about proteins that are involved in chromatin diminution. W...

Chromatin diminution is the programmed elimination of specific DNA sequences during development. It occurs in diverse species, but the function(s) of diminution and the specificity of sequence loss remain largely unknown. Diminution in the nematode Ascaris suum occurs during early embryonic cleavages and leads to the loss of germline genome sequences and the formation of a distinct genome in so...

I T has been reported earlier (S. BEERMANN 1959) that the primordial somatic cells in some copepods become different from the germ line cells by a process of “chromatin diminution” similar to that which occurs in Ascaris (BOVERI 1899). A good example is Cyclops strenuus diuulsus. As observed by HACKER (1894) and by STICH (1954) the mitotic spindles in the 5th cleavage division of this species c...

Pavlovian conditioning research has shown that unconditioned responses (UCR) to aversive unconditioned stimuli (UCS) are reduced when a UCS is predictable. This effect is known as UCR diminution. In the present study, we examined UCR diminution in the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) signal by varying the rate at which a neutral conditioned stimulus (CS) was paired with an aversive ...

Energy expenditure at rest and in response to a meal and to an infusion of noradrenaline was measured in 12 lactating women and compared with that in seven bottle feeding women and seven non-pregnant, non-lactating controls. The energy response of the lactating women was remeasured after lactation stopped. During lactation the resting metabolic rate was unaltered but there was a reduced respons...