Temporal regulation of M-phases of the cell cycle requires precise molecular mechanisms that differ among different cells. This variable regulation is particularly clear during embryonic divisions. The first embryonic mitosis in the mouse lasts twice as long as the second one. In other species studied so far (C. elegans, Sphaerechinus granularis, Xenopus laevis), the first mitosis is also longe...

The C proteins are major components of heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein complexes in nuclei of vertebrate cells. To begin to describe their structure, expression, and function we isolated and determined the DNA sequence of Xenopus laevis C protein cDNA clones. The protein predicted from the DNA sequence has a molecular mass of 30,916 kDa and is very similar to its human counterpart. Alth...

Xenopus model. It provides wild-type, transgenic and mutant frogs to research labs at cost and can now also supply oocytes, embryos and frozen sperm. All of the GA animals are quality controlled to ensure that their offspring have the expected phenotype. In addition to these animal resources EXRC is gathering insitu hybridisation probes, relevant antibodies and expression clones from labs; agai...

We have obtained evidence that a known intracellular component of the cadherin cell-cell adhesion machinery, /3-catenin, contributes to the development of the body axis in the frog Xenopus laevis. Vertebrate/3-catenin is homologus to the Drosophila segment polarity gene product armadillo, and to vertebrate plakoglobin (McCrea, P. D., C. W. Turck, and B. Gumbiner. 1991. Science (Wash. DC). 254: ...

Female-specific expression of the Xenopus laevis vitellogenin gene was reconstituted in vitro by addition of recombinant vaccinia-virus-produced estrogen receptor to nuclear extracts from male livers, in which this gene is silent. Transcription enhancement was at least 30 times and was selectively restricted to vitellogenin templates containing the estrogen-responsive unit. Thus, in male hepato...

Capacitative calcium entry is a major pathway through which intracellular calcium stores are refilled after stimulation. It has been suggested that the protein encoded by the transient receptor potential (trp) gene expressed in Drosophila photoreceptors may be homologous with capacitative calcium entry channels. Expression of the trp gene product in Xenopus oocytes led to significant increases ...

Mammalian and Drosophila homologues of Baf57 have been previously isolated as being a subunit of SWI/SNF-like chromatin remodeling complexes. Here, we report the cloning and developmental expression of Xenopus Baf57. We isolated XBaf57 by using an expression cloning approach to identify novel modulators of Xenopus Smad7. XBaf57 co-operates with XSmad7 by increasing the expression of neural mark...