The Sea Urchin Embryo

This book should be regarded as the continuation to my previous book Developmental Biology of the Sea Urchin Embryo, edited by the Academic Press in 1973, rather than as a new edition. Due to the exceedingly high rate of development in this field (something like 2000 papers have been published on this subject in these last 10 years), I preferred, in fact, not to describe again in detail the enormous amount of the old literature, as was attempted in my previous book, but to briefly summarize the state of the art in each problem and to describe in some detail the experiments per formed in the last 12 years. In doing so, more emphasis was given to the more recent ones and to those which can be considered as corner stones in each subject. Care was, however, taken to mention the reviews or key papers in which the reader can find a source of the details of the older literature, besides refering him to my previous book.

This book should be regarded as the continuation to my previous book Developmental Biology of the Sea Urchin Embryo, edited by the Academic Press in 1973, rather than as a new edition.

I. Development.- 1 Fertilization.- 1.1 The Egg Surface.- 1.1.1 The Jelly Coat.- 1.1.2 The Vitelline Layer.- 1.1.3 The Plasma Membrane.- 1.1.4 The Cortical Granules and the Formation of the Fertilization Membrane.- 1.1.5 The Block to Polyspermy.- 1.1.6 The Hyaline Layer.- 1.1.7 Ultrastructure and Composition of the Fertilization Membrane.- 1.2 The Sperm Surface and the Acrosomal Reaction.- 1.3 Sperm-Egg Interaction.- 1.3.1 Sperm Motility.- 1.3.2 Sperm Binding.- 1.3.3 Sperm Internalization and Pronuclear Movement.- 1.4 Some Physiological Changes that Occur at Fertilization or Following Parthenogenetic Activation.- 1.4.1 Ionic Movements.- 1.4.2 pH Changes.- 1.4.3 Membrane Potential.- 1.4.4 Other Permeability Changes.- 2 Embryonic Morphogenesis.- 2.1 General Description.- 2.2 Hybrids.- 2.3 Embryo Polarity.- 2.3.1 Animal-Vegetal Axis.- 2.3.2 Ventrodorsal Axis.- 2.3.3 Orientation of the Mitotic Furrow.- 2.3.4 The Egg Cortex.- 2.3.5 The Mitotic Apparatus and the Mechanism of Cleavage.- 2.4 Cell Interactions.- 2.4.1 The Process of Gastrulation.- 2.4.2 Cell Dissociation-Reaggregation Studies.- 2.4.3 Metabolism and Cell Interactions.- 3 Energy Metabolism.- 3.1 Oxygen Uptake.- 3.2 Carbohydrate Metabolism.- II. Nucleic Acids and Proteins.- 4 Deoxyribonucleic Acid.- 4.1 Organization of the Genome.- 4.2 Some Specific Loci.- 4.3 Chromatin.- 4.4 Synthesis of DNA.- 5 Ribonucleic Acid.- 5.1 Ribosomal RNA.- 5.2 Transfer RNA.- 5.3 Messenger RNA.- 5.4 Other RNA.- 6 Protein Synthesis.- 6.1 Rate of Protein Synthesis.- 6.2 Synthesis of Specific Proteins.- 7 Nucleomitochondrial Interactions.- Addendum.- 1 Fertilization.- 2 Embryonic Morphogenesis.- 3 Energy Metabolism.- 4 Deoxyribonucleic Acid.- 5 Ribonucleic Acid.- 6 Protein Synthesis.- 7 Nucleomitochondrial Interactions.- References.