The amounts of oxalate and citrate excreted in urine, and their urinary concentrations are important risk factors for the development of calcium oxalate kidney stones (1). The most widely used procedures to estimate these analytes are enzyme-based procedures using commercially avai ...

The polyamines, mainly putrescine (PU), spermidine (SPD), and spermine (SPM) (Fig. 1), are low molecular mass aliphatic amines that exist in all living organs, and play important roles in cell growth and differentiation (1). The intracellular concentrations in many cell types are in the submil ...

The tumor suppressor gene, p53, lies on chromosome 17p, and has been examined in a wide variety of primary tumors, xenografts, and cell lines derived from tumors. Point mutations in the evolutionally conserved codons of p53 have appeared to be the most common genetic alterations in human cancers (1). ...

Electrophoresis is an important and fundamental tool for DNA analysis. Traditional DNA electrophoresis is labor-intensive, skill-dependent, and relatively slow. To achieve greater performance, capillary electrophoresis (CE) has been developed for DNA work (1–2). The DNA frag ...

The first instrumentation for capillary zone electrophoresis (CZE) became available 10 years ago, and, since that time, interest in the technique has grown at a steady pace. However, although CZE has been embraced by a diverse scientific community that includes biochemists, chemists, and m ...

The apolipoproteins associated with serum lipoprotein particles give structural stability as well as regulatory control in lipid metabolism. The development of atherosclerosis is linked to dysfunction in lipid metabolism, and the serum lipoproteins are directly involved, e ...

Urine protein electrophoresis has been used primarily to confirm the presence or absence of Bence Jones protein, a small mol-wt protein consisting of either monoclonal free κ or free λ light chains. Bence Jones protein is significant in multiple myeloma patients, because nephropathy can de ...

Capillary electrophoresis (CE) is a new and innovative technique that separates charged or uncharged molecules in a thin buffer-filled capillary by the application of a very high voltage. Separations by CE are extremely fast: Some are achieved in less than 5 min, with reproducibility studi ...

Cell-cell and tissue-tissue interactions initiate and regulate genomic expression in the initiation and maintenance of cell differentiation and tissue morphogenesis for virtually every vertebrate organ system. They operate as the major signaling system between microenv ...

The circulatory system is the first organ system to develop in the embryo. It is an essential system for the normal development of other organs and the whole embryonic body. During the last several years, we have begun to understand the specific molecules that regulate the differentiation of cells ...

From the beginnings of experimental embryology (1) through the present day, the developing chick limb has proven a fruitful system to study. The results of these studies have demonstrated the ability of the limb bud to self-differentiate (2), the role of cellular and tissue interactions during ...

The mammalian secondary palate provides an excellent experimental paradigm with which to investigate regulation of the sequential expression and interaction of molecular signals during embryogenesis. The secondary palate arises as bilateral extensions of the oral aspect of ...

Primary monolayer cultures of marrow stromal cells, as they are referred to in the hemopoietic field, contain monocytes, macrophages, and endothelial cells (1,2). In addition, they contain precursor cells that can differentiate into multiple mesenchymal cell types (3–5). In vitro, the hi ...

Trophoblast cells are situated between maternal and embryonic compartments and effectively permit the embryo to develop within the female reproductive tract. These cells develop along a multilineage differentiation pathway and their growth and differentiation are pivotal ...

The maturation of striated muscle in primary cultures closely parallels the formation of striated muscle in vivo. Primary cultures thus serve as model systems for the study and manipulation of various aspects of muscle development including the regulation of gene expression, myofibr ...

The prostate is organized as a classical exocrine gland and is composed of a complex array of ductal-acinar structures embedded in stroma. The ducts and acini are lined by the secretory and nonsecretory epithelial cells, whereas stroma comprises of smooth muscle cells, fibroblasts, and blo ...

Recent developments in the field of skeletal myogenesis have identified signaling tissues that control the determination and the differentiation of muscle cells in unsegmented paraxial mesoderm of vertebrate embryos (1–3). Unsegmented mesoderm, called presomitic mesoderm ...

In vitro techniques for the study of chondrogenic differentiation of embryonic limb mesenchymal cells have been available for some time. Early methods require highdensity confluent monolayer cell cultures (1,2). The micromass culture method developed by Ahrens et al. (3) represent ...

Electroporation has been frequently adopted as a means to transfect primary cells or cell lines that demonstrate resistance to other commonly used methods of transfection, e.g., DEAE-dextran or calcium phosphate precipitation or liposome-mediated transfection. Electropor ...

A common goal of cell biologists is the establishment of in vitro model systems that faithfully recapitulate a particular biological process that occurs in vivo. Currently, numerous methodologies exist for in vitro analysis of osteoblastic cells, however, many of these methods depend on ...