Poly(A)-rich RNA isolated from ripening ovaries of snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis L.) yielded a single 17-kDa lectin polypeptide upon translation in a wheat-germ cell-free system. This lectin was purified by affinity chromatography. Translation of the same RNA in Xenopus leavis oocytes revealed a lectin polypeptide which was about 2 kDa smaller than the in vitro synthesized precursor, suggesting t...

Over the last few decades, the amphibian Xenopus laevis1 has been used as a unique comparative model to study the developmental and immunological aspects of tissue transplantation as well as self tolerance (Du Pasquier, Schwager et al. 1989; Robert and Ohta 2009). The immune system of X. laevis, one of the best defined outside mammals and chickens, is fundamentally similar to that of mammals. N...

A Janus-2 (JAK-2) binding protein, JBP1, has been found to function as an arginine methyl transferase and is now designated PRMT5. Co-injection of plasmids encoding this protein together with oncogenic (Val 12-containing) ras-p21 protein into Xenopus leavis oocytes results in strong inhibition of oncogenic p21-induced oocyte maturation. This inhibition appears to be dependent on the methyl tran...

The outer kinetochore binds microtubules to control chromosome movement. Outer kinetochore assembly is restricted to mitosis, whereas the inner kinetochore remains tethered to centromeres throughout the cell cycle. The cues that regulate this transient assembly are unknown. We find that inhibition of Aurora B kinase significantly reduces outer kinetochore assembly in Xenopus laevis and human ti...

Frogs possess pain receptors and pathways that support processing and perception of noxious stimuli however the level of organization is less well structured compared to mammals. It was long believed that the experience of pain was limited to 'higher' phylums of the animal kingdom. However, it is now commonly accepted that amphibians possess neuro-anatomical pathways conductive of a complete no...

Collini has long been interested in the role of intellectuals, and more particularly literary critics, British public life nineteenth twentieth centuries. But his latest book he examines tendentious—though not explicitly acknowledged—uses historical generalization a number twentieth-century critics Britain, beginning with T. S. Eliot, whose vague but pregnant pronouncement on “dissociation sens...

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