细胞功能测定

RNA interference is a simple, efficient, and highly scalable method for the analysis of gene functions in Caenorhaditis elegans independently of mutants availability (1,2). It is used to study individual genes, gene families, and also for genomewide screenings (3). In a RNAi experiment C. ele ...

The first step in elucidating the function of a particular gene of interest involves defining its expression pattern. One way to do this is by using a reporter gene to tag the gene either in a construct (transgenesis) or in the genome (homologous recombination). Transgenes have been generated using ...

Sea urchins have long been used to study morphogenesis and cell fate specification and are an established model system in developmental biology (1). Most contemporary studies have focused on early development, however, and few molecular genetic studies have examined larval developm ...

Amphibian embryos provide excellent material for understanding the establishment of the vertebrate body plan during early development. Fertilized eggs are readily obtained by hormone-induced spawning, and their developmental rate can be adjusted by ambient temperature re ...

Perhaps the most remarkable recent discovery in developmental biology is that the molecular mechanisms that pattern the animal embryo have been conserved throughout evolution. Many of the genes that specify embryonic pattern were first identified in the fruitfly Drosophila mela ...

For almost two decades, introduction of new genes, transgenic technology, has been the source of many new strains of mice that have become valuable tools in various fields of research. More recently, knockout technology has generated a large number of mutant strains. To maintain all these lines a ...

The development of the cardiovascular system represents one of the earliest critical processes in mammalian development (1). Historically, cardiovascular development has been studied by utilizing in vitro cell- and organ-based systems or by use of avian-based culture models. Even ...

Mammalian embryos grow within the uterus. This inaccessibility makes mammalian embryo investigations more difficult than those using non mammalian embryos. Although attempts to grow mammalian embryos outside of the uterus have appeared in the literature for many decades (see Note ...

Recent technological advances in the generation of recombinant adenovirus vectors have been applied to a wide range of studies in developmental biology. These vectors have allowed analyses of the regulation of expression and function of specific genes as well as evaluation of patterns ...

Human adenovirus is a double-stranded DNA virus with a 36-kb linear genome that contains four early transcription units (E1–E4), active at early (3–12 h) times after infection and five late transcription units (L1–L5) active thereafter and producing the structural genes of the virus. For furt ...

Since Solursh and his coworkers set up the limb bud micromass cultures in 1977 (1), this procedure has become a major model to analyze cellular and molecular event involved in chondrogenesis (2–7). Recently, RCAS retroviral vectors have been developed that can infect chicken embryos in ovo. The ...

Vectors derived from murine retroviruses have been used extensively for gene transfer in both preclinical and clinical studies. Retroviruses are small RNA viruses that replicate through a double-stranded DNA intermediate. The ability of retroviral vectors to integrate effici ...

The study of developmental mechanisms in postimplantation mammalian embryos can be performed for a short term using whole-embryo culture systems (see Chapters 7 and 8), or for an extended period using in utero (1,2) or exo utero manipulations (3). The usefulness of both in utero and exo utero surgi ...

Cell ablation can be a powerful technique for studying development. By systematically ablating cells from a developing tissue, one can gain insight into how the cells interact with each other to form the mature structure. Here we describe a new method for performing ablations. This method can be a ...

Much of the information about the fate and function of embryonic cell populations was gained in the early years of experimental embryology through ablation studies. With the advent of more sophisticated marking techniques using interspecific chimeras and molecular markers, ablat ...

The preimplantation mammalian embryo develops as a free living entity within the mother. This internal development inherently precludes facile experimental manipulation necessary to study cellular and molecular mechanisms of preimplantation development. In turn, this h ...

Proper cell-cell interactions are essential for controlling embryonic tissue development. The communications from cell to cell are transmitted through direct cell contact via adhesion molecules or short- and/or long-range signaling by diffusible molecule. The molecular bas ...

The complete description of its nearly invariant cell lineage (1,2) and the growing availability of cloned genes and markers for the cell lineage make Caenorhabditis elegans particularly favorable for mosaic analysis, and the literature is rich in examples that prove the usefulness of t ...

Embryonic skeletal muscles originate from metameric mesodermal structures called somites, which are formed according to a craniocaudal gradient from the paraxial mesoderm. In addition to providing all of the striated musculature of the body, somites give rise to the dorsal dermis and ...

Several labs have published data using tissue from genetically altered mouse embryos grafted into chick embryos (1–4). The advantages gained from this technique include the ability to analyze the behavior of a population of genetically altered cells among cells with a genetically norm ...