Abstract
Pioneering the Xenopus Oocyte and Egg Extract System
Highlights
As an undergraduate in biochemistry at Cornell University, I found that I liked both organic chemistry and biology
Small catalytic amounts of cytoplasm taken from progesterone-treated oocytes maturing from G2 prophase arrest to meiotic M phase caused the same progression rapidly when microinjected into other G2 prophase-arrested oocytes in the absence of hormonal stimulation
Protein-bound phosphate was measured as acidstable, alkali-labile phosphate, and remarkably, a dramatic 3-fold increase in the total amount of protein phosphate occurred just before germinal vesicle breakdown with progesterone treatment or immediately after injection of partially purified maturation-promoting factor (MPF). We found that this burst of phosphorylation occurred even in the presence of cycloheximide when oocytes were injected with partially purified MPF
Summary
As a graduate student in the late 1960s at Berkeley, I was introduced to the Xenopus oocyte by John Gerhart, who shared his fascination with the work of John Gurdon, who had pointed out the unique and powerful features of the oocyte and egg, the ability to microinject biochemically significant amounts of material into them while they carried out complex biological events. This approach using the oocyte as a living biochemical test tube long predated the age of cloning and gene transfection. The unique and powerful features of the Xenopus system hold great promise for more work and insight into fundamental problems of biology and medicine
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