Immunofluorescent anti-tubulin staining has been used to follow nuclear progression from dictyate to metaphase II during meiotic maturation of mouse oocytes in vitro. Antibody directed against tubulin isolated from sea-urchin eggs decorates the metaphase I and metaphase II spindles, as well as the cytoplasmic bridge, midbody, and polar body of the maturing mouse oocytes. Changes in the tubulin-...

The translocation t(11;19) is a recurrent feature of a subgroup of acute leukemias occurring in infants. This event fuses the genes MLL and ENL and creates the leukemogenic oncoprotein MLL-ENL. We studied the effect of retroviral MLL-ENL expression in primary mouse hematopoietic cells and show here that MLL-ENL requires the oncoprotein Myc to establish a reversible differentiation arrest of a m...

Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers in developed countries, and its incidence is negatively associated with high dietary fiber intake. Butyrate, a shortchain fatty acid fermentation by-product of fiber induces cell maturation with the promotion of growth arrest, differentiation, and/or apoptosis of cancer cells. The stimulation of cell maturation by butyrate in colonic cancer ce...

Mammalian oocytes grow and undergo meiosis within ovarian follicles. Oocytes are arrested at the first meiotic prophase, held in meiotic arrest by the surrounding follicle cells until a surge of LH from the pituitary stimulates the immature oocyte to resume meiosis. Meiotic arrest depends on a high level of cAMP within the oocyte. This cAMP is generated by the oocyte, through the stimulation of...

The continuous growth of the plant embryo is interrupted during the seed maturation processes which results in a dormant seed. The embryo continues development after germination when it grows into a seedling. The embryo growth phase starts after morphogenesis and ends when the embryo fills the seed sac. Very little is known about the processes regulating this phase. We describe mutants that aff...

Wild-type function of four Drosophila genes, spermatocyte arrest, cannonball, always early and meiosis I arrest, is required both for cell-cycle progression through the G2/M transition of meiosis I in males and for onset of spermatid differentiation. In males mutant for any one of these meiotic arrest genes, mature primary spermatocytes with partially condensed chromosomes accumulate and postme...

Quantitative biochemical criteria for lung growth and maturation were compared with the histological appearances in hypoplastic lungs from 20 fetuses and newborn infants. Cases associated with oligohydramnios showed a characteristic series of changes with narrow airways, retardation of epithelial and interstitial growth, delay in development of blood-air barriers, and low concentrations of phos...

Situs inversus with dextrocardia is a rare congenital anomaly. Azoospermia and situs inversus may be encountered in ciliary dyskinesia syndromes. We report the case of a 30-year-old male who manifested situs inversus totalis, dextrocardia and azoospermia with maturation arrest at primary spermatogenesis who presented with liver abscess. The patient responded well to treatment with i.v. metronid...

UNLABELLED Neutropenia, secondary to immune destruction or maturation arrest, is the most commonly described adverse haematological effect of beta-lactam antibiotics. We describe a case of reversible pancytopenia, with evidence of hypocellular marrow, after a prolonged course of piperacillin/tazobactam for 26 days. KEYWORDS Piperacillin; Tazobactam; Myelosuppression; Neutropenia.

Histiocytoid Sweet's syndrome is a recently described entity which has clinical features identical to typical Sweet's syndrome but is distinguished by a dermal cellular infiltrate composed not of mature neutrophils but of immature granulocytes. Herein, we report a case of bone marrow granulocytic maturation arrest and a histological histiocytoid Sweet's-like reaction pattern following trimethop...