Evidence for the appearance of novel gene products during amphibian blastulation

Genetic information begins to be transcribed during early cleavage in amphibian embryos,(1,2) and the tempo of informational RNA synthesis increases gradually through cleavage and into the early blastula stage. Previous studies from this laboratory (3,4) have shown that at this point a remarkable, near embryo-wide acceleration of informational RNA synthesis occurs, resulting during the mid-tolate blastular period in at least a 20-fold increase in the rate of synthesis of heterogeneously sedimenting, DNA-like RNA

Genomic function during the lampbrush chromosome stage of amphibian oogenesis

Throughout its lengthy developmental history the disposition of the genetic material in the amphibian oocyte nucleus differs from that in other cell types. The chromosomes in the oocyte nucleus, arrested for the whole of oogenesis at the prophase of the first meiotic division, are known to contain at least the tetraploid amount of DNA.(1,2) Oogenesis in amphibia requires months or even years to complete, depending on the species

Transforming growth factor beta (TGF beta) mediates schwann cell death in vitro and in vivo: Examination of c-jun activation, interactions with survival signals, and the relationship of TGF beta-mediated death to schwann cell differentiation

In some situations, cell death in the nervous system is controlled by an interplay between survival factors and negative survival signals that actively induce apoptosis. The present work indicates that the survival of Schwann cells is regulated by such a dual mechanism involving the negative survival signal transforming growth factor beta (TGF beta), a family of growth factors that is present in the Schwann cells themselves. We analyze the interactions between this putative autocrine death signal and previously defined paracrine and autocrine survival signals and show that expression of a dominant negative c-Jun inhibits TGF beta -induced apoptosis. This and other findings pinpoint activation of c-Jun as a key downstream event in TGF beta -induced Schwann cell death. The ability of TGF beta to kill Schwann cells, like normal Schwann cell death in vivo, is under a strong developmental regulation, and we show that the decreasing ability of TGF beta to kill older cells is attributable to a decreasing ability of TGF beta to phosphorylate c-Jun in more differentiated cells

Direct Foreign Investment in the Caribbean: A Legal and Policy Analysis

The purpose of this Article is to delineate the central issues facing countries which seek to encourage direct foreign investment in their local economies, and to suggest which approaches to these issues appear most likely to facilitate the attraction of foreign capital, technology and expertise, while preserving local control over the potentially detrimental effects of such investment

Direct Foreign Investment in the Caribbean: A Legal and Policy Analysis

The purpose of this Article is to delineate the central issues facing countries which seek to encourage direct foreign investment in their local economies, and to suggest which approaches to these issues appear most likely to facilitate the attraction of foreign capital, technology and expertise, while preserving local control over the potentially detrimental effects of such investment

Evidence for prelocalization of cytoplasmic factors affecting gene activation in early embryogenesis

Differentiation begins early in embryogenesis as different genes become active in different cells. Within the closed system of the early embryo, equal genomes thus direct the creation of diverse cell types. Though the nuclei of these cells contain complete copies of the same genome,(1,2) the nucleoplasmic and cytoplasmic environments of these genomes are not the same, as a result of the distribution of cleavage nuclei into diverse areas of egg cytoplasm early in the cleavage process. In some cases the fate of these nuclei, i.e., the type of differentiated cell to which they or their descendants give rise, has been seen to depend on the area of cytoplasm in which they come to lie