Regulation in early amphibian embryos

Research Project

Project/Area Number	62480019
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (B)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Research Field	動物発生・生理学
Research Institution	Kyushu University
Principal Investigator	YAMANA Kiyotaka Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, 理学部, 教授 (20037162)
Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha)	NOMURA Kazuya Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, 理学部, 助手 (30150395)
Project Period (FY)	1987 – 1988
Project Status	Completed (Fiscal Year 1988)
Budget Amount *help	¥6,800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥6,800,000) Fiscal Year 1988: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000) Fiscal Year 1987: ¥6,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥6,300,000)
Keywords	amphibian embryos / regulation / Xenopus laevis / dorsal axial structures / 中軸器官 / 欠損胚 / 胚発生
Research Abstract	To study the regulation of the dorsal axial structures, we removed the right animal and vagetal dorsal cells from an 8-cell embryo of Xenopus laevis, and examined their development and serial sections of the resulting normal embryos. Most of the cell-deficient embryos developed to normally proportioned tailbud embryos and no detectable delay was observed in their development. Examinations of serial sections revealed that they had restored bilateral symmetry. Cell numbers of the somites and the notochord had recovered to about 90% and 70&, respectively those of controls. Cell lineage analyses by means of staining with a fluorescent dye showed that progeny of the right ventral cells had formed almost all of the right dorsal axial structures, which are normally formed by the progeny of the right dorsal cells. However, almost all the notochord cells had been derived from the remaining left dorsal cells, but not from the ventral cells. These results indicate that some puantitative aspects of regulation as expressed in terms of the cell number were different between the two tissues examined.