Effect of neonatal unilateral enucleation on the development of orientation selectivity in kitten primary visual cortex]

In normally reared Kittens (6 weeks old), all orientations encoded by visual cells in the primary visual cortex are equally represented. In Kittens of the same age, unilaterally enucleated at birth and reared in identical conditions, 70% of orientation-selective cells preferentially respond to horizontal or vertical orientations.     

Selection and properties of a mouse L-cell transformant expressing human transferrin receptor

Transferrin receptors are expressed in large quantities on tissues with high requirements for iron such as maturing erythroid cells and placenta. In addition, they are found in abundance on proliferating cells from other normal tissues as well as on a variety of tumours. Recent genetic analysis has shown that structural genes for the transferrin receptor, probably transferrin itself and for p97, a melanoma-associated antigen that exhibits primary sequence homology with transferrin and that can bind ferric iron, each map in man to chromosome 3 (refs 9-12). On this basis it has been suggested that there may be a region on chromosome 3 containing genes involved in Fe transport and that rearrangements in this region of chromosome 3 may in some circumstances be associated with malignant transformation. Furthermore, it is unresolved whether all cell types express structurally identical transferrin receptors. To study these problems, and as an initial step towards cloning the transferrin receptor gene, we describe here the derivation of mouse L-cell transformants expressing the human transferrin receptor.     

Thymocyte subpopulation enriched for progenitors with an unrearranged T-cell receptor beta-chain gene

The development of T cells within the thymus is not well understood. It is known that thymocytes are derived from a progenitor cell in the bone marrow, the prothymocyte, and that cells in the subcapsular area of the thymus can give rise to progeny in both the cortex and the medulla. However, it is not clear whether all medullary thymocytes are necessarily derived from cortical cells. In particular, it has been difficult to distinguish intrathymic progenitor cells. Recently, however, Lesley et al. have defined a thymocyte subpopulation which can be isolated by treatment of the thymus with cytotoxic anti-Thy-1 antibodies and that seems to be enriched for thymocyte progenitors as measured first by its ability to repopulate transiently the thymus of an irradiated host, and second, by its high content of cells bearing Pgp-1 (refs 10, 11), a cell-surface glycoprotein of relative molecular mass 95,000 that is present on most or all prothymocytes of the bone marrow and on fetal thymocytes, but on only a few per cent of cells in the adult thymus. We show here that the gene encoding the beta-chain of the T-cell receptor for antigen, which is rearranged during T-cell ontogeny, is predominantly in the germline configuration in these cells.     

Gaze direction controls response gain in primary visual-cortex neurons

To localize objects in space, the brain needs to combine information about the position of the stimulus on the retinae with information about the location of the eyes in their orbits. Interaction between these two types of information occurs in several cortical areas, but the role of the primary visual cortex (area V1) in this process has remained unclear. Here we show that, for half the cells recorded in area V1 of behaving monkeys, the classically described visual responses are strongly modulated by gaze direction. Specifically, we find that selectivity for horizontal retinal disparity-the difference in the position of a stimulus on each retina which relates to relative object distance-and for stimulus orientation may be present at a given gaze direction, but be absent or poorly expressed at another direction. Shifts in preferred disparity also occurred in several neurons. These neural changes were most often present at the beginning of the visual response, suggesting a feedforward gain control by eye position signals. Cortical neural processes for encoding information about the three-dimensional position of a stimulus in space therefore start as early as area V1.     

Derivation of pluripotent epiblast stem cells from mammalian embryos

Although the first mouse embryonic stem (ES) cell lines were derived 25 years ago using feeder-layer-based blastocyst cultures, subsequent efforts to extend the approach to other mammals, including both laboratory and domestic species, have been relatively unsuccessful. The most notable exceptions were the derivation of non-human primate ES cell lines followed shortly thereafter by their derivation of human ES cells. Despite the apparent common origin and the similar pluripotency of mouse and human embryonic stem cells, recent studies have revealed that they use different signalling pathways to maintain their pluripotent status. Mouse ES cells depend on leukaemia inhibitory factor and bone morphogenetic protein, whereas their human counterparts rely on activin (INHBA)/nodal (NODAL) and fibroblast growth factor (FGF). Here we show that pluripotent stem cells can be derived from the late epiblast layer of post-implantation mouse and rat embryos using chemically defined, activin-containing culture medium that is sufficient for long-term maintenance of human embryonic stem cells. Our results demonstrate that activin/Nodal signalling has an evolutionarily conserved role in the derivation and the maintenance of pluripotency in these novel stem cells. Epiblast stem cells provide a valuable experimental system for determining whether distinctions between mouse and human embryonic stem cells reflect species differences or diverse temporal origins.