Functional equivalence of germ plasm organizers

What Is Germ Plasm?

Special Articles: Normal Human Stromata as Antigens for Complement Fixation in the Sera of Patients with Relapsing livax Malaria: DR. MICHAEL HEIDELBERGER and MANFRED M. MAYER. Induction of Leukemia in Mice: D. ARTHUR KIRSCHBAUM and DR. HENRY S. KAPLAN. The Neutralization in Vitro of Avian Pneumoencephalitis Virus by Newcastle Disease Immune Serum: D. J. R. BEACH. The Isolation of the St. Louis...

August Weismann on germ-plasm variation.

August Weismann is famous for having argued against the inheritance of acquired characters. However, an analysis of his work indicates that Weismann always held that changes in external conditions, acting during development, were the necessary causes of variation in the hereditary material. For much of his career he held that acquired germ-plasm variation was inherited. An irony, which is in te...

Germ Plasm: Protein Degradation in the Soma

Germ plasm is a specialized cytoplasm that is physically segregated to the germline cells during early embryogenesis. Recent results suggest that, in Caenorhabditis elegans, germ plasm is also prevented from accumulating in somatic lineages by a ubiquitin ligase that targets germ plasm proteins for degradation.

Human evolution by voluntary choice of germ plasm.

Temporal and Spatial Control of Germ-Plasm RNAs

In many species, germ cells form in a specialized germ plasm, which contains localized maternal RNAs. In the absence of active transcription in early germ cells, these maternal RNAs encode germ-cell components with critical functions in germ-cell specification, migration, and development. For several RNAs, localization has been correlated with release from translational repression, suggesting a...