A search of databases with the sequence from the 5' untranslated region of a Hydra cDNA clone encoding a receptor protein-tyrosine kinase revealed that a number of Hydra cDNAs contain one of two different sequences at their 5' ends. This finding suggested the possibility that mRNAs in Hydra receive leader sequences by trans-splicing. This hypothesis was confirmed by the finding that the leader ...

The introductory personal remarks refer to my motivations for choosing research projects, and for moving from physics to molecular biology and then to development, with Hydra as a model system. Historically, Trembley's discovery of Hydra regeneration in 1744 was the beginning of developmental biology as we understand it, with passionate debates about preformation versus de novo generation, mech...

Silencing the SPINK-related gene Kazal1 in hydra gland cells induces an excessive autophagy of both gland and digestive cells, leading to animal death. Moreover, during regeneration, autophagosomes are immediately detected in regenerating tips, where Kazal1 expression is lowered. When Kazal1 is completely silenced, hydra no longer survive the amputation stress (Chera S, de Rosa R, Miljkovic-Lic...

The Hydra polyp provides a powerful model system to investigate the regulation of cell survival and cell death in homeostasis and regeneration as Hydra survive weeks without feeding and regenerates any missing part after bisection. Induction of autophagy during starvation is the main surviving strategy in Hydra as autophagic vacuoles form in most myoepithelial cells after several days. When the...

In hydra and in mammalian cells the monoclonal antibody V recognises an epitope which colocalises with cytoskeletal structures. Using this antibody for expression screening, a cDNA clone (955 bp) was isolated from hydra, which covers an open reading frame for a protein of 294 amino acids with a calculated molecular mass of 32.8 kDa. Northern blot analysis of hydra RNA resulted in a single mRNA ...

References 1. Holstein, T., and Tardent, P. (1984). An ultrahigh-speed analysis of exocytosis: nematocyst discharge. Science 223, 830–833. 2. Kurz, E.M., Holstein, T.W., Petri, B.M., Engel, J., and David, C.N. (1991). Minicollagens in hydra nematocytes. J. Cell Biol. 115, 1159–1169. 3. Engel, U., Pertz, O., Fauser, C., Engel, J., David, C.N., and Holstein, T.W. (2001). A switch in disulfide lin...

The homeostatic mechanisms that maintain constant cellular ratios in hydra tissue were studied using mutant and chimeric hydra strains. Mutants having abnormal cellular compositions are isolated through sexual inbreeding of wild hydra, as described in previous papers of this series. Chimeric hydra are produced by making use of a strain (nf-I) which lacks interstitial cells, nerve cells and nema...

To investigate mechanisms involved in establishing polar organization in Arabidopsis embryos and seedlings, we used promoter trapping to identify molecular markers (beta-glucuronidase fusion genes) expressed in spatially restricted patterns along the apical-basal axis. Three markers were identified that are expressed, respectively, in the embryonic and seedling root tip (POLARIS), cotyledons an...

A core requirement of database engine testing is the ability to create synthetic versions of the customer’s data warehouse at the vendor site. A rich body of work exists on synthetic database regeneration, but suffers critical limitations with regard to: (a) maintaining statistical fidelity to the client’s query processing, and/or (b) scaling to large data volumes. In this paper, we present HYD...

We present Hydra, a blocking synchronization protocol which significantly outperforms all previous state-of-the-art synchronization algorithms. We experimentally show that the throughput of Hydra is higher than that of CC-Synch, a state-of-the-art synchronization protocol presented in PPoPP ’12, by a multiplicative factor of up to 7.9; this throughput is surprisingly close to the ideal. Hydra i...