Glucose and potassium transfer in the isolated heart ofVenus mercenaria

Riassunto Il cuore diVenus mercenaria consuma glucosio durante incubazione in acqua di mare artificiale. L'assunzione di glucosio è accompagnata da una penetrazione di potassio nell'organo. Cuori pretrattati con uabaina diffondono potassio nel medium di incubazione. L'insulina non modifica né l'assunzione di glucosio e potassio dei cuori normali né la diffusione di potassio dai cuori digitalizzati.

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Aided by a grant from the Chicago Heart Association.

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Trainee, Diabetes Teaching Grant No. 2A-5102, National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases, Public Health Service.     

Early developmental arrest of mammalian limbs lacking HoxA/HoxD gene function

Vertebrate HoxA and HoxD cluster genes are required for proper limb development. However, early lethality, compensation and redundancy have made a full assessment of their function difficult. Here we describe mice that are lacking all Hoxa and Hoxd functions in their forelimbs. We show that such limbs are arrested early in their developmental patterning and display severe truncations of distal elements, partly owing to the absence of Sonic hedgehog expression. These results indicate that the evolutionary recruitment of Hox gene function into growing appendages might have been crucial in implementing hedgehog signalling, subsequently leading to the distal extension of tetrapod appendages. Accordingly, these mutant limbs may be reminiscent of an ancestral trunk extension, related to that proposed for arthropods.     

Clonogenic growth of acute non-lymphocytic leukemia cells in serum-free medium

Summary We devised a serum-free medium for growth of leukemic colony-forming units (CFU-L), enriched with albumin, transferrin, lipids, insulin, hydrocortisone and oligoelements. Blast cells from 15 patients affected by acute non-lymphocytic leukemia were grown in this medium in the presence of human placental conditioned medium obtained under serum-free conditions (sfHPCM). Their clonogenic growth was comparable with that obtained in a serum-containing system. Furthermore, when serum-free cultures were carried out in absence of sfHPCM, either CFU-L growth was prevented or, if clones were obtained, the cultures showed a marked decrease in clonogenicity, indicating their strict dependence on growth factors.