The relationship between timing of closure of the posterior neuropore (PNP) and development of spinal neural tube defects (NTD) has been studied in individual mutant curly tail mouse embryos maintained in culture. Moderate delay in PNP closure results in development of tail flexion defects whereas extreme delay of PNP closure is associated with development of open NTD. Experimental enlargement ...

A progressive reduction in the size of rat metallothionein-1 mRNA following induction by copper chloride or dexamethasone was demonstrated on RNA blots, and was shown to be due to shortening of the poly(A)-tail. The rate of poly(A) removal was the same in rat liver and kidney following copper chloride induction, in rat liver following dexamethasone induction, and in mouse liver following copper...

Western blotting, immunofluorescence and immunogold electron microscopy were used to examine the compartmentalization, processing and redistribution of the integral plasma membrane protein CE9 on the spermatozoa of rats, mice and hamsters. In each species examined, spermatozoal CE9 was found to undergo endoproteolytic processing followed by a net redistribution from the posterior-tail domain in...

OBJECTIVE To investigate lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced DNA damage in preimplanting embryonic and uterine cells during preimplantation period of pregnancy that may ultimately inhibit the process of implantation in mouse. DESIGN Animal study. SETTING Academic research environment. ANIMAL(S) Sixty four Park strain female mice. INTERVENTION(S) The "minimum dose" (MD) of LPS was injected ...

Nuclear lamins are a type of intermediate filament (IF) proteins. They have a characteristic tripartite domain structure with a alpha-helical rod domain flanked by non-alpha-helical N-terminal head and C-terminal tail domains. While the head domain has been shown to be important for the formation of head-to-tail polymers that are critical assembly intermediates for lamin IFs, essential structur...

UNLABELLED Quantitative small-animal PET of mice requires successful delivery of radiotracers into the venous system. Intravenous injection of radiotracers via lateral tail veins is the most commonly used method of administration and can be technically challenging. Evaluation of the quality of an intravenous injection is necessary to determine whether small-animal PET is quantitatively accurate...