Long-acting contraceptive agents: norethisterone esters of monoalkenyl and monoalkynyl acids

The synthesis of nine new esters of norethisterone (17 alpha-ethynyl-17 beta-hydroxyestr-4-en-3-one) is described, with the esterifying acids bearing an acetylenic or olefinic function in a chain of eight or nine carbon atoms, for evaluation as long-acting contraceptive agents.     

The steroids and fatty acids of the basidiomycete Scleroderma polyrhizum

The fruit bodies of the Basidiomycete Scleroderma polyrhizum have been shown to contain the steroids ergosta-4,6,8(14) 22-tetraen-3-one and 5α,8α-epidoxyergosta-6,22-dien-3β-ol and also palmitic and oleic acids.     

The regulation of urea-biosynthesis enzymes in vertebrates

1. Carbamoyl phosphate synthetase, ornithine transcarbamoylase, the arginine-synthetase system and arginase were measured in the livers of ammoniotelic, ureotelic and uricotelic animals. The chelonian reptiles, whose nitrogen excretory patterns vary according to the habitat, and the Mexican axolotl, a neotenic species, were also studied. 2. The levels of the activities of the first three enzymes mentioned correlate with the amount of nitrogen excreted as urea. 3. The terrestrial turtle, which excretes mainly uric acid, maintains a high arginase activity but has very low levels of the activities of the other three enzymes. 4. The first three enzymes of the urea cycle vary in the phylogenic scale in a co-ordinated manner, which suggests that they are under the same regulatory mechanism. 5. Urea formation from endogenous arginine in vitro has a low efficiency in the Mexican axolotl. 6. The induction of metamorphosis in the Mexican axolotl by the administration of l-tri-iodothyronine, which causes a shift from ammonio-ureotelism to complete ureotelism, is accompanied by an increase mainly in carbamoyl phosphate synthetase and also by an improvement in the efficiency of hydrolysis of endogenous arginine in vitro to give urea. 7. The results obtained by differential centrifugation of the urea-cycle enzymes in rat and Mexican-axolotl livers are presented. The location requirements for the integration of a metabolic cycle are discussed.     

Fertility interactions in Drosophila: Theoretical model and experimental tests

The results of 11 experiments with Drosophila species show that fertility is not a reducible property: the fertility of a mating pair cannot be predicted from the average fertility of the two genotypes involved. We propose a model of fertility selection that does not assume additivity (or multiplicativity) but assumes random mating and that the genotypic frequencies are in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. Numerical simulations show that removal of the assumption of Hardy-Weinberg frequencies does not significantly change the equilibrium frequencies predicted by the model.     

Identification of the membrane component of the anion pump encoded by the arsenical resistance operon of R-factor R773

The arsenical resistance (ars) operon of the conjugative R-factor R773 encodes an ATP-driven anion extrusion pump, producing bacterial resistance to arsenicals. There are three structural genes, of which the product of the middle gene, arsB, has not previously been identified. From nucleotide sequence data, the ArsB protein is predicted to be a 45577 Dalton hydrophobic protein. A mini-Mu transposition procedure was used to construct an arsB-lacZ gene fusion, producing a hybrid ArsB-beta-galactosidase protein which was localized in the inner membrane. The operon was cloned into a T7 RNA polymerase expression vector. In addition to the previously identified ArsA and ArsC proteins, the cells synthesized an inner membrane protein with an apparent mass of 36 kD identified as the ArsB protein.