Mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase is a serine/threonine kinase whose function is thought to be essential for the transduction of mitogenic signals. MAP kinase is activated by phosphorylation induced by a variety of extracellular stimuli, and its direct upstream activator has been identified. Using amphibian and mammalian systems, we show here that ras can activate MAP kinase and its activa...

We evaluated the effect of three different cryodevices on membrane integrity, tubulin polymerization, maturation promoting factor (MPF) activity and developmental competence of in vitro matured (IVM) ovine oocytes. IVM oocytes were exposed during 3 min to 7.5% DMSO and 7.5% ethylene glycol (EG) in TCM199 and 25 sec to 0.5 M sucrose, 16.5% DMSO and 16.5% EG, loaded in open pulled straws (OPS), c...

The effects of neuromuscular blockade by atracurium and vecuronium on the power spectrum of the evoked compound action potential (ECAP) of the adductor pollicis were investigated in 30 adult patients undergoing elective surgery. The changes in amplitude and mean power frequency (MPF) of the ECAP were measured. Ten patients received an ED95 (0.23 mg kg-1) of atracurium and 10 received an ED95 (0...

In this paper, we consider the scene parsing problem. We propose a novel Multi-Path Feedback recurrent neural network (MPF-RNN) to enhance the capability of RNNs on modeling long-range context information at multiple levels and better distinguish pixels that are easy to confuse in pixel-wise classification. In contrast to CNNs without feedback and RNNs with only a single feedback path, MPFRNN p...

Nuclear envelope breakdown (NEB) and entry into mitosis are though to be driven by the activation of the p34cdc2-cyclin B kinase complex or mitosis promoting factor (MPF). Checkpoint control mechanisms that monitor essential preparatory events for mitosis, such as DNA replication, are thought to prevent entry into mitosis by downregulating MPF activation until these events are completed. Thus, ...

Although studies suggest that the low competence of oocytes from prepubertal animals is due to their insufficient cytoplasmic maturation and that FSH improves oocyte maturation possibly by retarding meiotic progression and allowing more time for cytoplasmic maturation, the mechanisms by which puberty and gonadotropins regulate meiotic progression require additional detailed studies. For the fir...

The auto-catalytic activation of the cyclin-dependent kinase Cdc2 or MPF (M-phase promoting factor) is an irreversible process responsible for the entry into M phase. In Xenopus oocyte, a positive feed-back loop between Cdc2 kinase and its activating phosphatase Cdc25 allows the abrupt activation of MPF and the entry into the first meiotic division. We have studied the Cdc2/Cdc25 feed-back loop...

Oocyte maturation in all species is controlled by a protein complex termed the maturation promoting factor (MPF). MPF comprises a cyclin-dependent kinase (CDK) and its partner cyclin, and it is regulated by dueling regulatory phosphorylation events on the CDK. In Caenorhabditis elegans, the Wee1/Myt1 ortholog WEE-1.3 provides the inhibitory phosphorylations on CDK-1 that keep MPF inactive and h...

Survivin is a recently described inhibitor of apoptosis and mitotic regulator which is selectively over-expressed in human tumors. Its expression rate is predictive of disease progression, early recurrences and resistance to therapy. Up-regulation of survivin in oral pre-malignant lesions (OPL) and in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) has already been demonstrated in previous studies. A criti...

Progesterone induces fully grown, stage VI, Xenopus oocytes to pass through meiosis I and arrest in metaphase of meiosis II. Protein synthesis is required twice in this process: in order to activate maturation promoting factor (MPF) which induces meiosis I, and then again after the completion of meiosis I to reactivate MPF in order to induce meiosis II. We have used antisense oligonucleotides t...