Publications by authors named "Jason R Mest"

The morphological effects of mutation and disease are often critical to our understanding of normal and abnormal function. The power and popularity of zebrafish as a forward and reverse genetic vertebrate model system, combined with its small size, have made it an ideal model in which to study the genetics of histologically scorable phenotypes. The presence of multiple tissue types in this organism's small larvae also makes it a potentially important model for toxicological analysis.

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Article Synopsis
  • Lighter skin in humans happens because they have fewer and smaller melanosomes, which are parts of skin cells that give color.
  • Researchers found that a special type of zebrafish called "golden mutants" has similar changes in these color-making parts.
  • A gene named SLC24A5 seems to be really important in determining skin color, especially since its variations are common in European populations but less so in African and East Asian groups.
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During early zebrafish (Danio rerio) development zygotic transcription does not begin until the mid-blastula transition (MBT) 3 h after fertilization. MBT demarcates transition from synchronous short cell cycles of S and M phases exclusively to full cycles encompassing G1 and G2 phases. Transcriptional profiling and RT-PCR analyses during these phases enabled us to determine that this shift corresponds to decreased transcript levels of S/M phase cell cycle control genes (e.

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