细胞技术

Animal cloning is becoming increasingly useful for its applications in biological inquiry and for its potential use in pharmaceutical, medical, and agricultural fields. Due to the complexity of the numerous steps required in reconstructing oocytes by nuclear transfer, detailed pr ...

In vitro fertilization (IVF) is a technical process in which retrieved oocytes are fertilized outside the body. The developing embryos grow in a laboratory environment and are subsequently transferred into the woman’s uterus. The IVF technique was first introduced as a treatment for infe ...

The mouse embryo culture technique is a valuable tool for assessing embryotoxicity of exogenous compounds as it excludes any confounding maternal and placental effects, allows for the selection of embryos that are at similar stages of development, and permits the control of exposure con ...

Fetal programming of adult disease is an area of research that has gained considerable attention. Epidemiological studies suggest that adverse intrauterine environment in fetal life is associated with a higher incidence of hypertension and coronary disease. Several mechanisms ...

The morphological development of the gastrointestinal tract (GI), in laboratory animals as well as in humans, has been well described since more than 100 years. However, even though its functional development and regulatory mechanisms are pretty well understood, our knowledge of the hum ...

Human and animal cell lines are important laboratory tools that can be used for studying a variety of cell functions. Some cell lines are blocked at a certain step of maturation and can be used in order to study the mechanisms involved in cell maturation. Because such cell lines can be differentiated tow ...

Study of Caenorhabditis elegans embryonic development has been useful to dissect the molecular mechanisms controlling cell proliferation, cell polarization, cell differentiation, and morphogenic events also involved in embryogenesis in human (1, 2). The strength of this orga ...

Solid-phase assays provide a simple, rapid and robust method for the analysis of protein–protein interactions; i.e., does protein A interacts with protein B? In this assay, protein A (here termed as ‘receptor’) is adsorbed to the wells of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) plate (sol ...

The atomic force microscope (AFM) may be used to collect quantitative height data from extracellular matrix molecules and macro-molecular assemblies adsorbed to a wide range of solid substrates. The advantages of atomic force microscopy include rapid specimen preparation, which d ...

In the scanning transmission electron microscope, the degree of electron scattering induced by biological specimens, such as ECM macromolecules, is dependent on the molecular mass. By calibrating the ratio of scattered to non-scattered electrons against a known mass standard, such as ...

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) measurements of intermolecular binding strength between a single pair of complementary cell adhesion molecules in physiological solutions provided the first quantitative evidence for their cohesive function. This novel AFM-based nanobiot ...

Proteolytic degradation of extracellular matrix (ECM) is a critical step during cell invasion and tissue transmigration that is required for many physiological and pathological processes. Cellular structures that mediate cell adhesion to, degradation of, and invasion into ECM a ...

Cell adhesion and cell migration are two primary cellular phenomena for which in vitro approaches may be exploited to effectively dissect the individual events and underlying molecular mechanisms. The use of assays dedicated to the analysis of cell adhesion and migration in vitro also af ...

Multiple cell types have an inherent ability to contract the extracellular matrix to which they are attached and grow on. Cells exert contractile forces on a compliant substrate, increase the tension, and deform it. Numerous intracellular as well as environmental factors are involved in de ...

Fibronectin fibrillogenesis is a cell-mediated, step-wise process that converts soluble fibronectin into insoluble fibronectin matrix. The deposition of fibronectin fibrils occurs at specific sites on the cell surface and depends on the unfolding of the fibronectin dimer. Fib ...

It is increasingly recognized that interactions between cancer cells and their surrounding stroma are critical for promoting the growth and invasiveness of tumors. For example, cancer cells alter the topography and molecular composition of stromal extracellular matrix by incre ...

Epithelial-mesenchymal interactions during organogenesis are regulated by dynamic and reciprocal interactions between growth factors and extracellular matrix (ECM) components. Mouse embryonic submandibular gland (SMG) epithelium, isolated from its endogenous m ...

Understanding how cell adhesion to the extracellular matrix controls mammalian development has been explored extensively using gene knockout technology. However, in some knockout mice, animals die during late embryogenesis or shortly after birth. In such cases, it is possible to an ...

Hydrogels composed of hydrophilic polymers such as polyethylene glycol and alginate have been used as scaffolds for various tissue engineering applications. This chapter describes procedures for encapsulation of cells in hydrogels and subsequently characterizing the ext ...

The use of site-specific recombinases has revolutionized the genetic analysis of development and has made possible the precise engineering of genomes (1,2). In Drosophila, the FLP/FRT system, introduced by Golic and Lindquist (3), has been used (1) to generate genetic mosaics by mitotic rec ...