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Article
Open AccessCharacterization and regulation of cell cycle-independent noncanonical gene targeting
Homology-dependent targeted DNA integration, generally referred to as gene targeting, provides a powerful tool for precise genome modification; however, its fundamental mechanisms remain poorly understood in h...
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Article
Open AccessThyroid and endostyle development in cyclostomes provides new insights into the evolutionary history of vertebrates
The endostyle is an epithelial exocrine gland found in non-vertebrate chordates (amphioxi and tunicates) and the larvae of modern lampreys. It is generally considered to be an evolutionary precursor of the thy...
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Article
Open AccessDevelopmental fates of shark head cavities reveal mesodermal contributions to tendon progenitor cells in extraocular muscles
Vertebrate extraocular muscles (EOMs) function in eye movements. The EOMs of modern jawed vertebrates consist primarily of four recti and two oblique muscles innervated by three cranial nerves. The development...
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Article
Open AccessShark genomes provide insights into elasmobranch evolution and the origin of vertebrates
Modern cartilaginous fishes are divided into elasmobranchs (sharks, rays and skates) and chimaeras, and the lack of established whole-genome sequences for the former has prevented our understanding of early ve...
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Article
Open AccessDynamic behavior of DNA topoisomerase IIβ in response to DNA double-strand breaks
DNA topoisomerase II (Topo II) is crucial for resolving topological problems of DNA and plays important roles in various cellular processes, such as replication, transcription, and chromosome segregation. Alth...
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Article
Open AccessStepwise participation of HGF/MET signaling in the development of migratory muscle precursors during vertebrate evolution
The skeletal musculature of gnathostomes, which is derived from embryonic somites, consists of epaxial and hypaxial portions. Some hypaxial muscles, such as tongue and limb muscles, undergo de-epithelializatio...
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Article
Open AccessDevelopment of hypobranchial muscles with special reference to the evolution of the vertebrate neck
The extant vertebrates include cyclostomes (lamprey and hagfish) and crown gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates), but there are various anatomical disparities between these two groups. Conspicuous in the gnathostom...
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Article
Non-homologous DNA end joining and alternative pathways to double-strand break repair
Mammalian non-homologous DNA end joining (NHEJ) is the primary pathway for the repair of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs) throughout the cell cycle, including d...
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Article
Open AccessDual loss of human POLQ and LIG4 abolishes random integration
Homologous recombination-mediated gene targeting has greatly contributed to genetic analysis in a wide range of species, but is highly inefficient in human cells because of overwhelmingly frequent random integ...
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Article
Open AccessDNA polymerase kappa protects human cells against MMC-induced genotoxicity through error-free translesion DNA synthesis
Interactions between genes and environment are critical factors for causing cancer in humans. The genotoxicity of environmental chemicals can be enhanced via the modulation of susceptible genes in host human c...
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Article
Evidence from cyclostomes for complex regionalization of the ancestral vertebrate brain
The brain of the hagfish, a cyclostome related to the lamprey, develops domains equivalent to the median ganglionic eminence and the rhombic lip, resembling the brains of gnathostomes (jawed vertebrates), sugg...
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Article
Open AccessConstruction and applications of exon-trap** gene-targeting vectors with a novel strategy for negative selection
Targeted gene modification by homologous recombination provides a powerful tool for studying gene function in cells and animals. In higher eukaryotes, non-homologous integration of targeting vectors occurs sev...
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Article
Open AccessDevelopmental genetic bases behind the independent origin of the tympanic membrane in mammals and diapsids
The amniote middle ear is a classical example of the evolutionary novelty. Although paleontological evidence supports the view that mammals and diapsids (modern reptiles and birds) independently acquired the m...
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Article
Open AccessBroken colinearity of the amphioxus Hox cluster
In most eumetazoans studied so far, Hox genes determine the identity of structures along the main body axis. They are usually linked in genomic clusters and, in the case of the vertebrate embryo, are expressed wi...
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Article
Impaired cell adhesion, apoptosis, and signaling in WASP gene-disrupted Nalm-6 pre-B cells and recovery of cell adhesion using a transducible form of WASp
Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome (WAS) is an X-linked immunodeficiency disease affecting cell morphology and signal transduction in hematopoietic cells. The function of Wiskott–Aldrich syndrome protein (WASp) and its ...
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Article
High-efficiency gene targeting in a human pre-B cell line: towards the human gene knockout project
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Highly Proficient Gene Targeting by Homologous Recombination in the Human Pre-B Cell Line Nalm-6
Gene targeting provides a powerful means for studying gene function by a reverse genetic approach. Despite recent rapid progress in gene knockdown technologies, gene knockout studies using human somatic cells ...
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Article
Overexpression of HAM1 gene detoxifies 5-bromodeoxyuridine in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae
5-Bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) is known to modulate expression of particular genes, and eventually arrest cell division in mammalian and yeast cells. To study a molecular basis for these phenomena, we adopted a ge...
