Elsevier

Developmental Biology

Volume 5, Issue 1, August 1962, Pages 68-83
Developmental Biology

The transplantation of nuclei between two species of Xenopus

https://doi.org/10.1016/0012-1606(62)90004-0Get rights and content

Abstract

The following combinations of nucleus and cytoplasm have been obtained by transplanting embryonic cell nuclei into enucleated and unfertilized eggs: Xenopus tropicalis nuclei in Xenopus laevis cytoplasm; X. laevis nuclei in X. tropicalis cytoplasm; and X. laevis nuclei transferred back to their own kind of cytoplasm after about 12 divisions in foreign X. tropicalis cytoplasm. In each case transplant embryos were arrested in development at a stage characteristic for the combination concerned.

The serial transplantation of nuclei between these species showed that the change induced in nuclei by foreign cytoplasm has the following properties: it is heritable through mitosis; it is specific in that all nuclei of one species are always changed in the same way by cytoplasm of the other species; some nuclear functions are changed more than others; the change is complete after 8 nuclear divisions and is not enhanced by further exposure to the foreign cytoplasm; lastly it is not reversed after 70 divisions of the nucleus in its original species of cytoplasm.

It was shown that egg cytoplasm contains substances which have a specific effect on the function and replication of foreign nuclei. The nature of these substances is not known.

The possibility is discussed that the nucleus of irradiated recipient eggs may affect the development which these eggs promote after nuclear transplantation. No evidence was found that it has any effect, and some experiments indicate that it does not.

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