Oxytocin induces embryonic diapause.

Embryonic development in many species, including case reports in humans, can be temporarily halted before implantation during a process called diapause. Facultative diapause occurs under conditions of maternal metabolic stress such as nursing. While molecular mechanisms of diapause have been studied, a natural inducing factor has yet to be identified.

Alternative Splicing and Nonsense-Mediated Decay of a Zebrafish GABA Receptor Subunit Transcript.

The superfamily of Cys-loop ionotropic neurotransmitter receptors includes those that detect GABA, glutamate, glycine, and acetylcholine. There is ample evidence that many Cys-loop receptor subunit genes include alternatively spliced exons. In this study, we report a novel example of alternative splicing (AS): we show that the 68-bp exon 3 in the zebrafish gene-which codes for the ρ2b GABAR subunit-is an alternative cassette exon.