Developmental genetic analysis has shown that embryos of the parasitoid wasp Nasonia vitripennis depend more on zygotic gene products to direct axial patterning than do Drosophila embryos. In Drosophila, anterior axial patterning is largely established by bicoid, a rapidly evolving maternal-effect gene, working with hunchback, which is expressed both maternally and zygotically. Here, we focus o...

RATIONALE Clinical and radiographic phenotypic characterizations were the base line tool of diagnosis in 3 syndromic disorders in which congenital cervico-thoracic kyphosis was the major deformity. PATIENTS CONCERNS Directing maximal care toward the radiographic analysis is not only the axial malformation but also toward the appendicular abnormalities was our main concern. We fully documented...

To determine the effect of cordotomy on the function of the bladder during surgical correction of congenital kyphosis in myelomeningocele, we reviewed 13 patients who had this procedure between 1981 and 1996. The mean age of the patients at operation was 8.9 years (3.7 to 16) and the mean follow-up was 4.8 years (1.3 to 10.8). Bladder function before and after operation was assessed clinically ...

Introduction: Children with severe kyphosis are prone to developing neurologic compromise, poor respiratory function and possible early death. Early identification and surgical intervention has proven to be effective. However they carry the highest surgical risk of all the spine deformities. Objectives: To present the surgical results and complications of patients with severe kyphosis treated a...

Temporal patterning is an important aspect of embryonic development, but the underlying molecular mechanisms are not well understood. Drosophila neuroblasts are an excellent model for studying temporal identity: they sequentially express four genes (hunchback --> Kruppel --> pdm1 --> castor) whose temporal regulation is essential for generating neuronal diversity. Here we show that hunchback --...

To study the microevolutionary processes shaping the evolution of the segmentation gene hunchback (hb) from Drosophila melanogaster, we cloned and sequenced the gene from 12 isofemale lines representing wild-type populations of D. melanogaster, as well as from the closely related species Drosophila sechellia, Drosophila orena, and Drosophila yakuba. We find a relatively low degree of sequence v...

Nanos protein promotes abdominal structures in Drosophila embryos by repressing the translation of maternal hunchback mRNA in the posterior. To study the mechanism of nanos-mediated translational repression, we first examined the mechanism by which maternal hunchback mRNA is translationally activated. In the absence of nanos activity, the poly(A) tail of hunchback mRNA is elongated concomitant ...

Anterior terminal development is controlled by several zygotic genes that are positively regulated at the anterior pole of Drosophila blastoderm embryos by the anterior (bicoid) and the terminal (torso) maternal determinants. Most Bicoid target genes, however, are first expressed at syncitial blastoderm as anterior caps, which retract from the anterior pole upon activation of Torso. To better u...

Vertebral anomalies may also distort the normal regional or global spinal alignment and necessitate some therapeutic interventions. Hemiepiphysiodesis is a traditional procedure usually described for these young patients but in more severe cases some type of osteotomy seems to be necessary. In this technical note, we describe a 5-year-old boy with failed previous hemiepiphysiodesis surgery, who...