Sea urchins are an important model for experiments at the intersection of development and systems biology, and technical innovations that enhance the utility of this model are of great value. This study explores pantropic retroviruses as a transduction tool for sea urchin embryos, and demonstrates that pantropic retroviruses infect sea urchin embryos with high efficiency and genomically integra...

The SpCOUP-TF gene is a highly conserved sea urchin homologue of the vertebrate COUP-TFs and the Drosophila seven up subfamily of transcription factors, which are members of the orphan steroid hormone receptors. Whole-mount in situ hybridization experiments, using three sea urchin species, detect the maternal SpCOUP-TF mRNA deposited unevenly in the oocytes, mature eggs and the blastomeres of t...

The purification and characterization of histone mRNA is a relatively straightforward procedure if conducted with the RNA from early cleavage stage sea urchin embryos [1 -6 ] where histone mRNA is the most abundant mRNA component found in small polysomes [1, 2]. Consequently this has led to an extensive characterization of the different subtypes of histone mRNA [4 -9 ] as well as to their use a...

Adenosine 5'-cyclic diphosphoribose [cyclic ADP-ribose (cADPR)], a metabolite of NAD+ that promotes Ca2+ release from sea urchin egg homogenates and microsomal fractions, has been proposed to act as an endogenous agonist of Ca2+ release in sea urchin eggs. We describe experiments showing that a microsomal fraction isolated from Tetrapigus nyger sea urchin eggs displayed Ca2+-selective single ch...

The sea urchin egg has been used as a system to study calcium-release mechanisms induced by inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3), cADP-ribose (cADPR), and more recently, nicotinic acid-adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NAADP). In order that cADPR and NAADP may be established as endogenous messengers for calcium release, the existence of intracellular enzymes capable of metabolizing these molecules ...

In recent years, besides the consumption of fresh sea urchin specimens, the demand of minimally-processed roe has grown considerably. This product has made frequent consumption in restaurants possible and frauds are becoming widespread with the partial replacement of sea urchin roe with surrogates that are similar in colour. One of the main factors that determines the quality of the roe is its ...

One of the polyketide compounds, the naphthoquinone pigment echinochrome, is synthesized in sea urchin pigment cells. We analyzed polyketide synthase (pks) and sulfotransferase (sult) gene expression in embryos and larvae of the sea urchin Strongylocentrotus intermedius from various stages of development and in specific tissues of the adults. We observed the highest level of expression of the p...

Together with the hemichordates, sea urchins represent basal groups of nonchordate invertebrate deuterostomes that occupy a key position in bilaterian evolution. Because sea urchin embryos are also amenable to functional studies, the sea urchin system has emerged as one of the leading models for the analysis of the function of genomic regulatory networks that control development. We have analyz...

Pathogen diversification can alter infection virulence, which in turn drives the evolution of host immune diversification, resulting in countermeasures for survival in this arms race. Somatic recombination of the immunoglobulin gene family members is a very effective mechanism to diversify antibodies and T-cell receptors that function in the adaptive immune system. Although mechanisms to divers...