In Drosophila, germ cell survival and directionality of migration are controlled by two lipid phosphate phosphatases (LPP), wunen (wun) and wunen-2 (wun2). wun wun2 double mutant analysis reveals that the two genes, hereafter collectively called wunens, act redundantly in primordial germ cells. We find that wunens mediate germ cell-germ cell repulsion and that this repulsion is necessary for ge...

Germ cell apoptosis in testis is essential for functional spermatogenesis. Recent evidence suggests that the Fas signaling system is critical for the regulation of testicular germ cell apoptosis. To further evaluate the Fas signaling system in testis, we examined the incidence of germ cell apoptosis in gld mice that lack a functional Fas-signaling pathway. gld mice have a small, but significant...

Extragonadal germ cell tumors are extremely rare and account for only 3%-5% of all germ cell tumors. These tumors are rarely associated with metachronous primary testicular germ cell tumors. We report the fourth case of a primary germ cell tumor occurring after the treatment of a primary CNS germ cell tumor in a 27 year-old male with embryonal cell carcinoma of the testicle 9 years after the tr...

Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH) is a rare neoplasm defined as the proliferation of bone marrow langerhans cells, which is a kind of dendritic cells. The major pathological features of LCH are expression of CD1a and S100 as well as Birbeck granules. Its presentation can differ from a mild bone lesion to a multi-systemic evolved malignant neoplasm; however, the latter outcome is almost rare. ...

Background: Teratomas are the most common ovarian germ cell tumors. Growing teratoma syndrome is a rare condition that entails appearance of extragonadal teratomas during or after chemotherapy treatment non seminomatous

spermatogonia are the male germ line stem cells whose life long expansion is needed for permanent production of spermatozoa. the present study was designed to examine the effect of hcg treatment on germ cell proliferation following stem cell transplantation in mice. spermatogonial stem cells were isolated from neonatal mice testes and characterized by alkaline phosphatase, immunoreactivity and ...

Germ cell tumors (GCTs) are a group of tumors showing variations in clinical presentation and histopatho-logical and biological characteristics [1, 2]. The GCTs are neoplasms that develop from primordial germ cells of the human embryo, which are normally destined to produce sperm or ova. Primordial germ cells appear to originate in the yolk sac endoderm and migrate around the hind-gut to the ge...