Precise spatial and temporal control of developmental genes is crucial during embryogenesis. Regulatory mutations that cause the misexpression of key developmental genes may underlie a number of developmental abnormalities. The congenital abnormality preaxial polydactyly, extra digits, is an example of this novel class of mutations and is caused by ectopic expression of the signalling molecule ...

Strong's Luxoid (1stD) is a semidominant mouse mutation in which heterozygotes show preaxial hindlimb polydactyly, and homozygotes show fore- and hindlimb polydactyly. The digit patterns of these polydactylous limbs resemble those caused by polarizing grafts, since additional digits with posterior character are present at the anterior side of the limb. Such observations suggest that 1stD limb b...

Unequivocal identification of the full composition of a gene is made difficult by the cryptic nature of regulatory elements. Regulatory elements are notoriously difficult to locate and may reside at considerable distances from the transcription units on which they operate and, moreover, may be incorporated into the structure of neighbouring genes. The importance of regulatory mutations as the b...

In the limb bud, patterning along the anterior-posterior (A-P) axis is controlled by Sonic Hedgehog (Shh), a signaling molecule secreted by the "Zone of Polarizing Activity", an organizer tissue located in the posterior margin of the limb bud. We have found that the transcription factors GATA4 and GATA6, which are key regulators of cell identity, are expressed in an anterior to posterior gradie...

In a previous article, we have proved a result asserting the existence of a compatible family of Galois representations containing a given crystalline irreducible odd two-dimensional representation. We apply this result to establish new cases of the Fontaine-Mazur conjecture, namely, an irreducible Barsotti-Tate λ-adic 2-dimensional Galois representation unramified at 3 and such that the traces...

In this paper we extend the niteness result on the p-primary torsion subgroup in the Chow group of zero cycles on the selfproduct of a semistable elliptic curve obtained in joint work with S. Saito to primes p dividing the conductor. On the way we show the niteness of the Selmer group associated to the symmetric square of the elliptic curve for those primes. The proof uses p-adic techniques, in...

Introduction he dawn of the new millennium provides an excellent opportunity to assess the future of conservation in the 21st century. The Fontaine-bleau Symposium, held in France in November 1998 to mark the 50th anniversary of IUCN–The World Conservation Union, reviewed conservation achievements over the last 50 years and assessed future challenges. This symposium noted a dichotomy. On the on...

In the case of local fields of positive characteristic we introduce an analogue of Fontaine’s concept of Galois modules with crystalline height h ∈ N. If h = 1 these modules appear as geometric points of Faltings’s strict modules. We obtain upper estimates for the largest upper ramification numbers of these modules and prove (under an additional assumption) that these estimates are sharp. 0. In...

Maternal diabetes has an established aetiological link with developmental abnormalities, and the prevalence of major congenital malformations in the offspring of affected women is approximately 4-8%, compared to the general population risk of about 3%. Hallucal polydactyly, particularly with an unusual proximal placement of the extra digit, has been reported as a distinctive anomaly in diabetic...