Current Topics in Developmental Biology

Paul M. Wassarman, the Series Editor of CTDB since 2007, is Professor in the Dept. Developmental and Regenerative Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. He received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brandeis University where he carried out thesis research in the Graduate Dept. Biochemistry with Professor Nathan O. Kaplan. In 1967 Wassarman joined the Division of Structural Studies at the MRC, Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England as a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellow with Sir John C. Kendrew. In 1972 he joined the faculty of the Dept. Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School and in 1986 moved to the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology where he was Chair of the Dept. Cell and Developmental Biology and Adjunct Professor in the Dept. Cell Biology, New York University School of Medicine. In 1996 he moved to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he was the Lillian and Henry M. Stratton Professorial Chair of the Dept. Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. Wassarman has published more than 200 research papers and reviews, dealing primarily with mammalian oogenesis, fertilization, and early embryogenesis. Eveline Litscher is at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, USA

• PrefaceEveline Litscher and Paul M. Wassarman1. Fertilization and the fast block to polyspermy in the African Clawed Frog, Xenopus laevis: A historical perspectiveAnne E. Carlson2. Chapter title to be confirmedJean-Ju Lucia Chung3. Chapter title to be confirmedRafael Fissore4. Chapter title to be confirmedWilliam H. Kinsey5. Chapter title to be confirmedAmber Krauchunas6. The Mammalian Egg's Zona Pellucida, Fertilization, and FertilityEveline Litscher and Paul Wassarman7. Chapter title to be confirmedHitoshi Sawada8. Function, structure, and regulation of the broadly conserved gamete membrane fusion protein, HAP2William J. Snell9. Gamete activation for fertilization and seed development in flowering plantsMeng-xiang Sun, Hanxian Xiong and Wei Wang10. Paternal contributions to mammalian zygote.Peter J. Sutovsky11. Chapter title to be confirmedKarl Swann12. Chapter title to be confirmedPablo E. Visconti13. Chapter title to be confirmedGary Wessel14. Chapter title to be confirmedMariana Federica Wolfner15. Ovarian follicle formation and activationHua Zhang, Xuebing Yang and Yan Zhang16. Cytoskeletal dynamics in gamete (pro)nuclear migration across flowering plants, animals, and yeastTomo Kawashima and Yilin Zhang17. Luteinizing hormone-induced changes in the structure of mammalian preovulatory folliclesLaurinda Jaffe and Corie Owen