Maternal investment for offspring's growth and survival is widespread among diverse organisms. Vertical symbiont transmission via maternal passage is also pivotal for offspring's growth and survival in many organisms. Hence, it is expected that vertical symbiont transmission may coevolve with various organismal traits concerning maternal investment in offspring. Here we report a novel phenotypi...

Honeybee royal jelly is reported to have body-enlarging effects in holometabolous insects such as the honeybee, fly and silkmoth, but its effect in non-holometabolous insect species has not yet been examined. The present study confirmed the body-enlarging effect in silkmoths fed an artificial diet instead of mulberry leaves used in the previous literature. Administration of honeybee royal jelly...

In 1678, Stefano Lorenzini first described a network of organs of unknown function in the torpedo ray-the ampullae of Lorenzini (AoL). An individual ampulla consists of a pore on the skin that is open to the environment, a canal containing a jelly and leading to an alveolus with a series of electrosensing cells. The role of the AoL remained a mystery for almost 300 years until research demonstr...

UNLABELLED Objectives : The aim of the present study was to evaluate protective effect of royal jelly on sperm parameters, testosterone level, and malondialdehyde (MDA) production in mice. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty-two adult male NMRI mice weighing 30±2 g were used. All the animals were divided into 4 groups. CONTROL GROUP received saline 0.1 ml/mouse/day orally for 30 days. Royal jelly ...

Sperm limitation may be an important selective force influencing gamete traits such as egg size. The relatively inexpensive extracellular structures surrounding many marine invertebrate eggs might serve to enhance collision rates without the added cost of increasing the egg cell. However, despite decades of research, the effects of extracellular structures on fertilization have not been conclus...

Organisms with external fertilization are often sperm limited, and in echinoids, larger eggs have a higher probability of fertilization than smaller eggs. This difference is thought to be a result of the more frequent sperm-egg collisions experienced by larger targets. Here we report how two components of egg target size, the egg cell and jelly coat, contributed to fertilization success in a se...

BACKGROUND Royal jelly is a nutritious substance produced by the young nurse bees and contains significant amounts of proteins which are important for cell growth and proliferation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of royal jelly as an alternative to fetal bovine serum (FBS) in cell culture using cell proliferation assays and live cell imaging. MATERIALS AND METHODS MRC-5 cell...

The distributions of K, Na, Mg and Ca within frog ovarian and oviductal oocytes were studied by electron probe wavelength dispersive X-ray microanalysis. An important heterogeneity could be found both in nuclear and jelly coated oocytes. The highest K, Mg and, to a lesser extent, Na concentrations were found in the pigmented area of the peripheral cytoplasm. There is a certain correlation betwe...

objectives: the aim of the present study was to evaluate protective effect of royal jelly on sperm parameters, testosterone level, and malondialdehyde (mda) production in mice. materials and methods: thirty-two adult male nmri mice weighing 30±2 g were used. all the animals were divided into 4 groups. control group: received saline 0.1 ml/mouse/day orally for 30 days. royal jelly group (rj): re...

OBJECTIVE This study tested the hypothesis that a standardized dose of jelly beans could be used as an alternative sugar source to the 50-g glucose beverage to screen for gestational diabetes mellitus. STUDY DESIGN One hundred sixty pregnant women at 24 to 28 weeks' gestation were recruited for a prospective study to compare 2 sugar sources for serum glucose response, side effects, preference...