Development of mandibular,hyoid and hypobranchial muscles in the zebrafish: homologies and evolution of these muscles within bony fishes and tetrapods

Background  

During vertebrate head evolution, muscle changes accompanied radical modification of the skeleton. Recent studies have suggested that muscles and their innervation evolve less rapidly than cartilage. The freshwater teleostean zebrafish (Danio rerio) is the most studied actinopterygian model organism, and is sometimes taken to represent osteichthyans as a whole, which include bony fishes and tetrapods. Most work concerning zebrafish cranial muscles has focused on larval stages. We set out to describe the later development of zebrafish head muscles and compare muscle homologies across the Osteichthyes.     

Establishment and characterization of a cell line derived from human colon adenocarcinoma (HuCCL-14)

A continuous human colon carcinoma cell line (HuCCL-14) was established whose cells possess an epithelial-like morphology and are capable of growing in soft agar and on monolayers of normal cells. HuCCL-14 cells yielded high levels of carcinoembryonic antigen, and the analysis of their chromosomal constitution revealed a mode of 70 chromosomes per cell. HuCCL-14 cells produce malignant tumors when injected into nude mice. Preliminary virologic studies indicate the release of RNA particles having a density of 1.15--1.19 g/ml.     

Folding and Characterization of a Bio-responsive Robot from DNA Origami

The DNA nanorobot is a hollow hexagonal nanometric device, designed to open in response to specific stimuli and present cargo sequestered inside. Both stimuli and cargo can be tailored according to specific needs. Here we describe the DNA nanorobot fabrication protocol, with the use of the DNA origami technique. The procedure initiates by mixing short single-strand DNA staples into a stock mixture which is then added to a long, circular, single-strand DNA scaffold in presence of a folding buffer. A standard thermo cycler is programmed to gradually lower the mixing reaction temperature to facilitate the staples-to-scaffold annealing, which is the guiding force behind the folding of the nanorobot. Once the 60 hr folding reaction is complete, excess staples are discarded using a centrifugal filter, followed by visualization via agarose-gel electrophoresis (AGE). Finally, successful fabrication of the nanorobot is verified by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), with the use of uranyl-formate as negative stain.