Flatfish is famous for the asymmetric transformation during metamorphosis. The molecular mechanism behind the asymmetric development has been speculated over a century and is still not well understood. To date, none of the metamorphosis-related genes has been identified in flatfish. As the first step to screen metamorphosis-related gene, we constructed a whole-body cDNA library and a whole-body...

Manduca sexta larvae are a model for growth control in insects, particularly for the demonstration of critical weight, a threshold weight that the larva must surpass before it can enter metamorphosis on a normal schedule, and the inhibitory action of juvenile hormone on this checkpoint. We examined the effects of nutrition on allatectomized (CAX) larvae that lack juvenile hormone to impose the ...

Metamorphosis in insects is a remarkable phenomenon where the larva undergoes a striking morphological reorganization to give rise to the adult. Over the years, various physiological factors and pathways that govern metamorphosis have been discovered, and at the same time, some understanding about the origins of this phenomenon has also emerged. This review summarizes the current state of knowl...

Image metamorphosis as an animation tool has mostly been employed in the context of the entire image. This work explores the use of isolated and focused image based metamorphosis between two-dimensional objects, while capturing the features, colors, and textures of the objects. This pinpointed approach allows one to independently overlay several such dynamic shapes, without any bleeding of one ...

Three age-groups of thyroidectomized tadpoles of Rana catesbeiana were treated with a series of the same graded increasing concentrations of thyroxin. Normal froglets were formed from the three groups at the end of the induced metamorphosis. Growth and metamorphosis were compared. It was found that while the growth rate was a function of ageing, the pattern and rate of metamorphosis were not af...

Thyroid hormone receptors (TRs) can repress or activate target genes depending on the absence or presence of thyroid hormone (T3), respectively. This hormone-dependent gene regulation is mediated by recruitment of co-repressors in the absence of T3 and coactivators in its presence. Many TR-interacting coactivators have been characterized in vitro. In comparison, few studies have addressed the d...

Ultraviolet B (UVB) radiation is an important environmental factor. It is generally known that UVB exhibits high genotoxicity due to causing DNA damage, potentially leading to skin carcinogenesis and aging in mammals. However, little is known about the effects of UVB on the development and metamorphosis of insects, which are the most abundant terrestrial animals. In the present study, we perfor...

In recent years, integrative animal biologists and behavioral scientists have begun to understand the complex interactions between the immune system and the neuroendocrine system. Amphibian metamorphosis offers a unique opportunity to study dramatic hormone-driven changes in the immune system in a compressed time frame. In the South African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, the larval pattern of imm...

BACKGROUND Frog metamorphosis is totally dependent on thyroid hormone (T3) and mimics the postembryonic period around birth in mammals. It is an excellent model to study the molecular basis of postembryonic development in vertebrate. We and others have shown that many, if not all, matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs), which cleave proteins of the extracellular matrix as well as other substrates, ar...

Hydrozoan larvae normally metamorphose in response to an obligate external environmental cue. Application of certain artificial chemical stimuli will also induce metamorphosis. These chemicals and their inhibitors have been used to define and order some of the signal transduction events involved in this process. Results from this study show that exogenous application of serotonin (5-HT) will in...