Germ line

Cole et al. (1995) reported on knock-out mice with a germ line deletion of GR. They demonstrated that lack of GR leads to perinatal death, atelectasis of the lung, and lack of adrenalin synthesis. To circumvent perinatal lethality, Tranche et al. (1999) and Brewer et al. (2003) generated tissue-specific somatic deletions of GR. This allowed to characterize GR function in the CNS, the immune system, and the liver in more detail. In particular, these approaches revealed novel aspects of organ-specific glucocorticoid physiology such as anxiety-like behavior, growth control, and polyclonal T cell activation. 

Tripathy NK, Dey L, Majhi B, et al. 1987. Genotoxicity of metacid established through the somatic and germ line mosaic assays and the sex-linked recessive lethal test in drosophila. Arch Toxicol 61 53-57. 

Chapman, D. L., and Wolgemuth, D. J. (1992). Identification of a mouse B-type cyclin which exhibits developmentally regulated expression in the germ line. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 33 259-269. 

Ponzetto, C., Wadewitz, A. G., Pendergast, A. M., Witte, O. N., and Wolgemuth, D. J. (1989). P I50c ai,/is detected in the mouse male germ line by an in vitro kinase assay and is associated in haploid cells with a stage-specific phosphoprotein. Oncogene 4 685-690. 

Zakeri, Z. F., Ponzetto, C., and Wolgemuth, D. J. (1988). Translational regulation of the novel haploid-specific transcripts for the c-abl proto-oncogene and a member of the 70 kDa heat-shock protein gene family in the male germ line. Dev. Biol. 125 417-422. 

Strome S, Wood WB 1983 Generation of asymmetry and segregation of germ-line granules in early C. elegans embryos. Cell 35 15—25... 

LGT is not expected to be common among or play the same role in the evolution of multicellular plants and animals, especially those with sequestered germ lines, and there simply is no extensive data on LGT in unicellular eukaryotes. 

Information metabolism provides a way to store and retrieve the information that guides the development of cellular structure, communication, and regulation. Like other metabolic pathways, this process is highly regulated. Information is stored by the process of DNA replication and meiosis, in which we form our germ-line cells. These processes are limited to specific portions of the cell cycle. Information is retrieved by the transcription of DNA into RNA and the ultimate translation of the signals in the mRNA into protein. 

De Smet C, Lurquin C, Lethe B, Martelange V, Boon T (1999) DNA methylation is the primary silencing mechanism for a set of germ line- and mmor-specific genes with a CpG-rich promoter. Mol Cell Biol 19 7327-7335... 

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