Peanut agglutinin specifically binds to a sperm region between the nucleus and mitochondria in tunicates and sea urchins

Author(s):  
Shiori Nakazawa ◽  
Maki Shirae-Kurabayashi ◽  
Hitoshi Sawada
Author(s):  
D. F. Blake ◽  
L. F. Allard ◽  
D. R. Peacor

Echinodermata is a phylum of marine invertebrates which has been extant since Cambrian time (c.a. 500 m.y. before the present). Modern examples of echinoderms include sea urchins, sea stars, and sea lilies (crinoids). The endoskeletons of echinoderms are composed of plates or ossicles (Fig. 1) which are with few exceptions, porous, single crystals of high-magnesian calcite. Despite their single crystal nature, fracture surfaces do not exhibit the near-perfect {10.4} cleavage characteristic of inorganic calcite. This paradoxical mix of biogenic and inorganic features has prompted much recent work on echinoderm skeletal crystallography. Furthermore, fossil echinoderm hard parts comprise a volumetrically significant portion of some marine limestones sequences. The ultrastructural and microchemical characterization of modern skeletal material should lend insight into: 1). The nature of the biogenic processes involved, for example, the relationship of Mg heterogeneity to morphological and structural features in modern echinoderm material, and 2). The nature of the diagenetic changes undergone by their ancient, fossilized counterparts. In this study, high resolution TEM (HRTEM), high voltage TEM (HVTEM), and STEM microanalysis are used to characterize tha ultrastructural and microchemical composition of skeletal elements of the modern crinoid Neocrinus blakei.


Author(s):  
Frank J. Longo

Measurement of the egg's electrical activity, the fertilization potential or the activation current (in voltage clamped eggs), provides a means of detecting the earliest perceivable response of the egg to the fertilizing sperm. By using the electrical physiological record as a “real time” indicator of the instant of electrical continuity between the gametes, eggs can be inseminated with sperm at lower, more physiological densities, thereby assuring that only one sperm interacts with the egg. Integrating techniques of intracellular electrophysiological recording, video-imaging, and electron microscopy, we are able to identify the fertilizing sperm precisely and correlate the status of gamete organelles with the first indication (fertilization potential/activation current) of the egg's response to the attached sperm. Hence, this integrated system provides improved temporal and spatial resolution of morphological changes at the site of gamete interaction, under a variety of experimental conditions. Using these integrated techniques, we have investigated when sperm-egg plasma membrane fusion occurs in sea urchins with respect to the onset of the egg's change in electrical activity.


Planta Medica ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 76 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
S Ivanova ◽  
I Urakova ◽  
O Pozharitskaya ◽  
A Shikov ◽  
V Makarov

1986 ◽  
Vol 55 (03) ◽  
pp. 338-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
H Takahashi ◽  
W Tatewaki ◽  
M Hanano ◽  
R Nagayama ◽  
A Shibata

SummaryPlatelet-type von Willebrand’s disease (vWD) is a bleeding disorder characterized by a heightened interaction between platelets and von Willebrand factor (vWF) as the result of an intrinsic platelet abnormality (probably in GPIb). Platelet aggregability was nearly normal in response to thrombin, wheat germ agglutinin and Ricinus communis agglutinin in this disorder. Unmodified platelets showed no aggregation upon the addition of peanut agglutinin. Partially purified human vWF induced little aggregation of washed patient platelets, but the aggregation was greatly enhanced in the presence of plasma devoid of vWF. Monoclonal antibodies directed against GPIb and GPIIb/IIIa as well as EDTA completely inhibited vWF-induced aggregation. These results indicate that human vWF induces aggregation of platelet-type vWD platelets in the presence of divalent cations and some plasma cofactor(s), and that both GPIb and GPIIb/IIIa are involved in this aggregation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-211
Author(s):  
Patricia E. Chu

The Paris avant-garde milieu from which both Cirque Calder/Calder's Circus and Painlevé’s early films emerged was a cultural intersection of art and the twentieth-century life sciences. In turning to the style of current scientific journals, the Paris surrealists can be understood as engaging the (life) sciences not simply as a provider of normative categories of materiality to be dismissed, but as a companion in apprehending the “reality” of a world beneath the surface just as real as the one visible to the naked eye. I will focus in this essay on two modernist practices in new media in the context of the history of the life sciences: Jean Painlevé’s (1902–1989) science films and Alexander Calder's (1898–1976) work in three-dimensional moving art and performance—the Circus. In analyzing Painlevé’s work, I discuss it as exemplary of a moment when life sciences and avant-garde technical methods and philosophies created each other rather than being classified as separate categories of epistemological work. In moving from Painlevé’s films to Alexander Calder's Circus, Painlevé’s cinematography remains at the forefront; I use his film of one of Calder's performances of the Circus, a collaboration the men had taken two decades to complete. Painlevé’s depiction allows us to see the elements of Calder's work that mark it as akin to Painlevé’s own interest in a modern experimental organicism as central to the so-called machine-age. Calder's work can be understood as similarly developing an avant-garde practice along the line between the bestiary of the natural historian and the bestiary of the modern life scientist.


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