This study aimed to evaluate the effect of essential (EAAs) and non-essential (NEAAs) amino acids (AAs) at levels of 25 and 25 or 50 and 50 μl/ml, respectively, on in vitro developmental potential of rabbit embryos at 4and 8-cell stages. Total of 12 sexual mature New Zealand White (NZW) rabbit does and 3 fertile NZW bucks were used in this study. All does and bucks were kept under similar condi...

Of the various theories that have been advanced to account for the mechanism of furrow formation and cytokinesis in animal cells (9, 21), the notion of active constriction in the equatorial cortex has recently received support from physical measurements such as those reported by Wolpert (22) and Rappaport (13) . A probable structural manifestation of the "contractile ring" has been found throug...

A cytoplasmic factor and a cortical factor participating in cleavage furrow formation had been previously found in Cynops eggs (Sawai, 1972). These were investigated in the present study in Ambystoma and Xenopus eggs, by the method of cytoplasmic or cortical transplantation. Results were practically similar to those previously obtained with Cynops, indicating that in all the species of eggs dur...

After publication of the paper, the authors discovered an error in figure preparation. In Fig. 3 B of the original manuscript, the authors used the same mlc-11 GFP channel kymograph in both the mlc1-11 (left) and iqg1Δ (right) panels. The authors have provided the corrected image and the affected legends (Fig. 3 and Video 2). This error in figure preparation does not impact the conclusions of t...

Changing patterns of actin localization have been studied on a light microscopic level by means of fluorescently labeled heavy meromyosin. The cellular distribution of actin is characterized by four major patterns, each of which corresponds to a particular phase of cell division. Long actin fibers are a prominent feature of the interphase cell. They disappear as the cell rounds up for mitosis a...

During cleavage, different cellular processes cause the zygote to become partitioned into a set of cells with a specific spatial arrangement. These processes include the orientation of cell division according to: an animal-vegetal gradient; the main axis (Hertwig's rule) of the cell; and the contact areas between cells or the perpendicularity between consecutive cell divisions (Sachs' rule). Ce...

Cell division controls the faithful segregation of genomic and cytoplasmic materials between the two nascent daughter cells. Members of the Aurora, Polo and cyclin-dependent (Cdk) kinase families are known to regulate multiple events throughout cell division, whereas another kinase, citron kinase (CIT-K), for a long time has been considered to function solely during cytokinesis, the last phase ...

We cloned two genes, KIN1 and KIN2, encoding kinesin-II homologues from the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila and constructed strains lacking either KIN1 or KIN2 or both genes. Cells with a single disruption of either gene showed partly overlapping sets of defects in cell growth, motility, ciliary assembly, and thermoresistance. Deletion of both genes resulted in loss of cilia and arrests in cyto...

The control of the cell cycle is dependent on the ability to synthesize and degrade proteins called cyclins. When antisense oligonucleotides are used to deplete Xenopus embryos of mRNA encoding cyclin B protein, embryonic cleavage is inhibited. Surprisingly, after missing several rounds of cleavage, the cell cycle and cell division resumes. These studies indicate that the early embryonic cell c...

As one of the most essential post-translational modifications (PTMs) of proteins, proteolysis, especially calpain-mediated cleavage, plays an important role in many biological processes, including cell death/apoptosis, cytoskeletal remodeling, and the cell cycle. Experimental identification of calpain targets with bona fide cleavage sites is fundamental for dissecting the molecular mechanisms a...