Definition
Cytoplasmic preparation of the egg of the African clawed frog, Xenopus laevis, that is capable of recapitulating many of the biochemical and physiological phenomena of the early embryonic cell cycle. These phenomena include nuclear envelope formation, DNA replication, DNA condensation, and mitotic spindle formation, all of which can occur after the addition of purified Xenopus sperm chromatin. Pioneered in the late 1980s/early 1990s by Andrew Murray, several different types of egg extracts can be produced that are either arrested in specific cell cycle stages, or undergo embryonic cycles as cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (CDK1) activity oscillates (Murray 1991).
Incubating unfertilized Xenopus eggs with EGTA prior to crushing them by centrifugation yields cytostatic factor (CSF) extract. Its name is derived from the basis that mature oocytes/eggs are arrested...
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References
Murray AW (1991) Cell cycle extracts. Methods Cell Biol 36:581–605
Pomerening JR, Kim SY, Ferrell JE Jr (2005) Systems-level dissection of the cell-cycle oscillator: bypassing positive feedback produces damped oscillations. Cell 122(4):565–578
Schmidt A, Rauh NR, Nigg EA, Mayer TU (2006) Cytostatic factor: an activity that puts the cell cycle on hold. J Cell Sci 119(Pt 7):1213–1218
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Pomerening, J.R. (2013). Xenopus laevis Egg Extract. In: Dubitzky, W., Wolkenhauer, O., Cho, KH., Yokota, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Systems Biology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9863-7_1331
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-9863-7_1331
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