Abstract
For several reasons, which I hope will become more apparent from the following discussion of results obtained over the past five years, my laboratory’s interest started to center around a unique experimental system: the rapidly growing chicken oocyte. Commonly known as an egg yolk, this yellow sphere represents a single cell, the female zygote, and is the result of an enormous growth process that starts with a microscopically small cell within the ovary of a laying hen. During the last 7 days before being released as fully-grown oocyte (diameter, ∼35 mm) from its follicle into the oviduct, this cell accumulates as much as 2 g of protein (mostly in the form of lipoproteins) each day. Thus, the oocytes of oviparous (egg-laying) animals not only provide a fascinating system to study lipoprotein transport, but also constitute a challenge in cell biological terms. How does such a giant cell function? How can it be assured to receive exactly those nutrient components which are required for sustenance of the developing embryo?
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