Newborn Daughter Research Articles

Changing Names: The Miracle of Iphis in Ovid "Metamorphoses" 9

W HAT IS IN A NAME? In literature proper name has the potential to reflect what character does or suffers, and hence may be privileged vehicle of meaning. As Gianna Petrone observes, a name can assume and concentrate in itself network of metaphoric and symbolic meanings, social connotations, literary allusions, and, above all, references to the text in which it is located.1 No author is more aware of the signifying power of names than Ovid, whose major poems, the Fasti and Metamorphoses, are well stocked with etymological lore.2 In the Metamorphoses, Greek proper names frequently prefigure the form into which character will be changed (Lycaon becomes wolf, Daphne laurel tree, Syrinx shepherd's pipe, etc.). In these instances, Ovid works with the inherited material of aetiologizing myth which explains the origins of things in anthropomorphic terms. Occasionally, however, he gives new names to characters in his sources with the intention of punning and playing on them.3 This is the case in the tale of Iphis' sexual transformation from girl to boy in Metamorphoses 9.666-797. Here Ovid apparently draws upon the Hellenistic story of Leucippus, prose summary of which survives in the collection of transformation tales compiled by Antoninus Liberalis (17).4 In Antoninus Liberalis' version, which takes place in the Cretan city of Phaestus, Galataea disguises her newborn daughter as boy named Leucippus because the father, Lamprus, cannot afford to bring up girl. All goes well until the girl's beauty threatens to reveal her true gender, whereupon the worried mother supplicates Leto to change the sex of her daughter. Although Ovid's tale

Genetic Analysis of the Bipolar Pattern of Bud Site Selection in the Yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Previous analysis of the bipolar budding pattern of Saccharomyces cerevisiae has suggested that it depends on persistent positional signals that mark the region of the division site and the tip of the distal pole on a newborn daughter cell, as well as each previous division site on a mother cell. In an attempt to identify genes encoding components of these signals or proteins involved in positioning or responding to them, we identified 11 mutants with defects in bipolar but not in axial budding. Five mutants displaying a bipolar budding-specific randomization of budding pattern had mutations in four previously known genes (BUD2, BUD5, SPA2, and BNI1) and one novel gene (BUD6), respectively. As Bud2p and Bud5p are known to be required for both the axial and bipolar budding patterns, the alleles identified here probably encode proteins that have lost their ability to interact with the bipolar positional signals but have retained their ability to interact with the distinct positional signal used in axial budding. The function of Spa2p is not known, but previous work has shown that its intracellular localization is similar to that postulated for the bipolar positional signals. BNI1 was originally identified on the basis of genetic interaction with CDC12, which encodes one of the neck-filament-associated septin proteins, suggesting that these proteins may be involved in positioning the bipolar signals. One mutant with a heterogeneous budding pattern defines a second novel gene (BUD7). Two mutants budding almost exclusively from the proximal pole carry mutations in a fourth novel gene (BUD9). A bud8 bud9 double mutant also buds almost exclusively from the proximal pole, suggesting that Bud9p is involved in positioning the proximal pole signal rather than being itself a component of this signal.

Production of senescent cells of Saccharomyces cerevisiae by centrifugal elutriation

The centrifugal elutriator has been used as a baby machine by loading the chamber with a population of mixed-generation daughter cells and allowing this population to grow, divide and age under continuous washing-out of newborn daughter cells. Clear peaks in the number of elutriated cells were reproducibly obtained for at least ten generations. The parent cells growing in the chamber continued to divide at the steady-state generation time of 95-100 min, showing no change in cycle time during aging. The washed-out daughter cells increased in volume during the first five generations from their steady-state value of 17 micro3 to a maximum of 34 micro3. As to be expected, the generation times of these large daughters, determined in a synchronous batch culture, were shorter (130 min) than that of the steady-state daughters (240 min), even when derived from 15-generation parents. No indication for a volume increase of daughter cells without bud was observed when a population was allowed to grow in the chamber without washing-out the smaller daughter cells. The 15-generation parent population, recovered from the chamber, had an average volume of 80 micro3 and consisted of: (i) 71% cells with more than ten scars, (ii) 13% cells with one to nine scars, and (iii) 17% daughter cells. The production of senescent cells by undisturbed growth in the elutriator chamber has been prolonged to 29 generations. The method is therefore suitable to examine what factors determine the life span of budding yeast.

Pseudohypoaldosteronism in Eight Families: Different Forms of Inheritance Are Evidence for Various Genetic Defects

Pseudohypoaldosteronism is a rare hereditary disorder presenting in early infancy with renal salt loss leading to hyponatremia and hyperkalemia despite high levels of plasma aldosterone. The patients are insensitive to mineralocorticoids; however, sodium supplementation is able to correct electrolyte abnormalities. Absent or greatly diminished type I aldosterone receptors in peripheral mononuclear leucocytes have been recently demonstrated and explain the lack of response to mineralocorticoids. We have studied the mode of inheritance in eight families with a total of nine patients. There was evidence for an autosomal recessive form of inheritance in four families, while the other four families appeared to have an autosomal dominant mode of transmission. In three families the autosomal recessive form was characterized by normal receptor as well as hormone data in both parents, while in one family receptor levels in both parents were greatly reduced, but hormone levels were normal. In the four families with an autosomal dominant mode of transmission there was always one parent with reduced receptor binding in peripheral mononuclear leucocytes and elevated serum hormone levels. These parents were entirely asymptomatic. In an extended family we were able to study an aunt and her newborn daughter, who were both also biochemically affected but clinically asymptomatic. It, therefore, appears that this dual pattern of genetic transmission may indicate differing genetic defects which cause the same clinical picture of pseudohypoaldosteronism.

Neonatal gangrene in the newborn infant of a diabetic mother.

The newborn daughter of a diabetic mother developed neonatal gangrene of an upper extremity with massive muscle necrosis of the forearm, and required early dorsal and volar fasciotomies with subsequent debridements to salvage the limb. Decreased perfusion and local ischemia resulting in neonatal gangrene may result from the greater propensity for intravascular thrombosis in infants whose mothers have diabetes mellitus. While previous investigators have suggested that surgical intervention should be avoided in neonatal gangrene, in more severe cases early fasciotomy may be required to salvage a limb and avoid life-threatening complications.

Quantitative characterization of plasmid instability inSaccharomyces cerevisiae using flow cytometry-cell sorting

The fraction of daughter cells ofS.cerevisiae YT76 born without plasmids increases significantly during the postexponential phase of batch growth. Plasmid segregation data presented is obtained using a new method based on rapid flow cytometry-cell sorting isolation of subpopulations consisting of newborn daughter cells and dividing mother cells.

"Daddy, Talk!": Thoughts on Reading Early Picture Books

"Daddy, Talk!" Thoughts on Reading Early Picture Books David Pritchard (bio) For all my eagerness to begin reading to my newborn daughter, and for all the expectations I brought to the event, I find I can't remember the first book we read together, or for that matter the first dozen or two. Many of the books we spent so much time with during those early months of reading have long since disappeared. Others have gone back to the library or simply found their way to the trash. While some were certainly more appealing than others—more lovingly drawn, more thoughtfully designed—in actual practice there was little to set them apart from each other. Most anything to do with pictures and pages, particularly if they were cardboard, would answer. What I do remember of those early picture books is the awkwardness and disappointment with which I first took them up, and a certain doubt as to just what I thought I was doing. Gathering my floppy little three-month-old onto my lap, thumbing through the stiff, usually wordless pages, I realized that my anticipation of this magic moment was all wrong. I'd been imagining something that clearly lay years ahead of us, something dreamy and intimate, faraway and enchanted—not this cartoon parade of doggies and kitties, shoes and umbrellas, hippos and spoons and bananas that I suddenly found facing me on the page. How did one read such things, anyway? How did one get from these barnyard catalogues, these wild-animal alphabets, to the wondrous bedtime storybooks I remembered so fondly from my childhood? And wasn't it presumptuous of me to expect an infant, who barely knew where she left off and the world began, to be interested in some little white squares with lines and colors all over them? If it was amusement we wanted, there were blocks and balls and squeeze toys scattered throughout the apartment. If it was edification, an introduction to the world, why not sit down with the real thing on our lap—a hat, a fork, or one of our cats, assuming we could drag one of our cats out of hiding? But of course we did read them, Kate's mom and me, and if initially they were little more than excuses to sit with Kate in our arms between naptimes, books were soon enough one of our liveliest pleasures, a part of our day together that, unlike any toy, grew along with us, keeping pace [End Page 64] with all the changes of those first two years. And now that we've left them behind, along with the backpack and diaper pail and stroller that seemed such permanent fixtures in our daily life, I look back on these first-word or early picture books as something much more than the mere forerunners of enchantment I had originally assumed them to be. Curiously enough, it is not the pictures that come first to mind, but rather what one might call the picture-book voice. I might never have thought of this as a "voice" at all, in the same league with the magical story voice I'd felt cheated out of when I first sat down with these books, if it weren't for a happy misstatement on Kate's part, long after I had forgotten to wonder why it was we were bothering to study all those xylophones, yaks, and zebras. Almost two, and soon to put first-word books aside, Kate had taken to bossing us around the apartment with her newfound powers of language: "Daddy, walk!" she would order, or "Mommy, sit!," and a variety of similar commands which for a time made up our daily paces. But when she crawled into our lap with a book it was never "Daddy, read!"—though that was the word we'd always used ourselves—but rather "Daddy, talk!," or, with a subsequent leap of grammar, "Talk it!" Well, of course. What I had persisted in thinking of as reading was simply talking about pictures, or more often than not talking for them, bringing them alive. Unlike the soothing lullabies and sing-song nursery rhymes that made up...

INCREASE IN CELL SIZE AS A MEASURE OF GROWTH OF SACCHAROMYCES CEREVISIAE

The increase in the length of the major axis of daughter cells as a measure of cell growth was re-examined with special reference to the nuclear behavior, employing a diploid strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The increase in cell size in a cell cycle proceeded in a similar manner either in the synchronous culture or in the single-cell culture as a number of investigators described. Newly established facts concerning the size of daughter cells in a growth process are as follows: The newborn daughter cells had a rather uniform size under definite conditions regardless of the size of their mother cells. The heterogeneity in the cell size was mainly due to its divisional age; the cell increased in size with every budding, and the difference in cell size between age 0 and age 1 was the most prominent. The newborn daughter cells initiated budding some time after the mother cell had initiated budding, during which time the size of daughter cells generally increased. Shape of the bud varied gradually during the growth process. The bud- initial was cylindrical and then gradually became the prolate spheroidal form.Nuclear events such as DNA synthesis and nuclear migration proceeded also in a similar manner as others described. The daughter cells exhibiting migrating nucleus in the Giemsa-stained preparations showed extraordinary uniformity in size distribution. This shows that the migration of nucleus is a very rapid process; it may proceed within a period of 0.1 generation and the cell size at the time of nuclear migration was estimated to be about the fraction of 0.8 of its full size.