Concept Formation

Current Russian psychology is understood in the sense of the Vygotskian tradition and Gal'perin's position. The central concepts in this tradition are the activity of a subject and his or her social-cultural interactions with the environment.     

Formation of Peyer's patches

Formation of Peyer's patches requires complex interactions between the gut epithelium, the mesenchyme, and bone-marrow-derived hematopoietic progenitors. The first Peyer's patches anlage appear around embryonic day 15.5, when the endoderm has undergone transition to a simple epithelium, the lymphatic vessels have reached the intestinal mucosa, and mesenchymal cells have started to form clusters. Recent data using knockout mice provide insight into the molecular nature of the signals that mediate Peyer's patch ontogeny. These include members of the tumor-necrosis factor family and homeostatic chemokines.     

Formation of bilirubin glucoside

1. Rat liver microsomal preparation can effect the transglucosylation from UDP-glucose to bilirubin in the presence of Mg(2+). 2. Other nucleotides, namely CDP-glucose, ADP-glucose and GDP-glucose, were not active as glucosyl donors. 3. Only trace amounts of galactose, galacturonic acid and N-acetylglucosamine were conjugated to bilirubin when their respective UDP derivatives were used in the reaction mixture. 4. The azobilirubin glucosides produced by coupling with p-diazobenzenesulphonic acid and diazotized ethyl anthranilic acid were separable from the corresponding azobilirubin glucuronides by t.l.c. 5. The glucoside was, however, hydrolysed by both beta-glucosidase and various preparations of beta-glucuronidase; azobilirubin and glucose were liberated in the process. 6. Kinetic studies showed that the effects of pH and Mg(2+) on the two conjugating systems were similar. 7. The specific activities of hepatic bilirubin UDP-glucosyltransferase, expressed as mug of bilirubin ;equivalents' conjugated/h per mg of protein, are respectively 1.7 and 2.4 for male and female rats. 8. The K(m) values for bilirubin and UDP-glucose are 5.7x10(-5)m and 1.6x10(-3)m respectively. 9. The glucoside and glucuronide conjugations of bilirubin are discussed in relation to the availability of the conjugating agents and aglycone in the liver.     

Palmelloid Formation of Chlamydomonas

Organic acids such as citrate, oxalate, succinate, fumarate, malate, glutamate, aspartate, glycolate and phthalate induce palmelloid formation at neutral pH in liquid cultures of Chlamydomonas, while acetate hardly does it. The palmelloids consist of a minimum of four cells and are embedded in a jelly-like material. The effective organic acids are generally not only unutilizable as respiratory substrates, but affect also slightly the respiration or photosynthesis and tend to inhibit growth. In a synchronous culture, an addition of citrate at an early stage of a light or dark period has little or no effect on cell growth and multiplication but inhibits the dissociation of divided daughter cells strikingly.     

Palmelloid Formation of Chlamydomonas II. Mechanism of Palmelloid Formation by Organic Acids

To clarify the mechanism of palmelloid formation by organic acids, the dissociation of the suspension of palmelloids in different media was studied. It was found that the palmelloids can be dissociated by the calcium ion at the low concentration of 6.8 × 10^-5M, but not by the magnesium ion. The dissociation is suppressed by the phosphate ion. Furthermore, Chlamydomonas cells grown in media containing EDTA or GEDTA or in media deficient in calcium, are induced to form palmelloids. These results indicate that the effect of organic acids on the formation of palmelloids are due to their ability to chelate with calcium.     

Plastid Thylakoid Formation

Inclusion bodies found in proplastids and immature chloroplastswhich possibly play a role in thylakoid formation are described.These include membrane-bound bodies, the bounding membrane ofwhich is continuous with those of the grana and striated osmiophilicdroplets whose over-all morphology bears a resemblance to granastacks. It is suggested that both inclusions contain precursormolecules for membrane synthesis and that they may be actualsites of thylakoid formation.