The study was aimed at analysing body size in relation to form of gonad maturation (amount of mature germ cells) in 329 under-yearling sea trout males. The fish, aged 7 months, were caught in late October-early November in 3 streams located in north-western Poland. Each stream supported fish belonging to a different sib group. Standard histological techniques and a computer image analysis progr...

Background: Gonad shielding has been recommended during pelvic x-rays since the 1950s. The popular method of gonad shielding is placement a lead shield in the midline of the pelvis. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence and utility of gonad shielding in pediatrics undergoing pelvic x-rays.Materials and MethodsFollowing study approval, we retrospectively retrieved data from the di...

Homolog pairing, which plays a critical role in meiosis, poses a potential risk if it occurs in inappropriate tissues or between nonallelic sites, as it can lead to changes in gene expression, chromosome entanglements, and loss-of-heterozygosity due to mitotic recombination. This is particularly true in Drosophila, which supports organismal-wide pairing throughout development. Discovered over a...

Cell proliferation has been shown to have multiple functions in development and pattern formation, including roles in growth, morphogenesis, and gene expression. Previously, we determined that the earliest known morphological event downstream of the male sex determining gene, Sry, is the induction of proliferation. In this study, we used proliferation inhibitors to block cell division during ea...

In Caenorhabditis elegans gonad morphogenesis, the final U-shapes of the two hermaphrodite gonad arms are determined by migration of the distal tip cells (DTCs). These somatic cells migrate in opposite directions on the ventral basement membrane until specific extracellular cues induce turning from ventral to dorsal and then centripetally toward the midbody region on the dorsal basement membran...

In Drosophila, Piwi proteins associate with Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) and protect the germline genome by silencing mobile genetic elements. This defense system acts in germline and gonadal somatic tissue to preserve germline development. Genetic control for these silencing pathways varies greatly between tissues of the gonad. Here, we identified Vreteno (Vret), a novel gonad-specific prote...

Since the early 1980s, the population of European eels (Anguilla anguilla) has dramatically declined. Nowadays, the European eel is listed on the red list of threatened species (IUCN Red List) and is considered as critically endangered of extinction. Pollution is one of the putative causes for the collapse of this species. Among their possible effects, contaminants gradually accumulated in eels...

12 MR imaging is the most appropriate non-invasive technique for quantifying the growth of 13 somatic and gonad tissues and to determine sex in the Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas. 14 However, this technique is too costly for field studies where oysters are used as bioindicators of 15 environmental quality or to be applied routinely in hatcheries. We have tested the ability of low 16 Nuclear ...

The differentiation of a testis or ovary from a bipotential gonadal primordium is a developmental process common to mammals, birds and reptiles. Since the discovery of SRY, the Y-linked testis-determining gene in mammals, extensive efforts have failed to find its orthologue in other vertebrates, indicating evolutionary plasticity in the switch that triggers sex determination. Several other gene...

New techniques are being applied to identify all the genes involved in mammalian gonad development and differentiation. As this list of genes increases, understanding the potential interactions between these genes will become increasingly difficult. We used a real time reverse transcription PCR (real time RTPCR) protocol to examine and compare the relative expression levels of 55 genes in indiv...