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American Zoologist 1978 18(2):349-358; doi:10.1093/icb/18.2.349
© 1978 by The Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology
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The Cardiac Lethal Mutant of Ambystoma mexicanum: A Re-examination

ROBERT R. KULIKOWSKI and FRANCIS J. MANASEK
Department of Anatomy, The University of Chicago 1025 East 57th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637

SYNOPSIS. Hearts of embryonic axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum) homozygous for gene c do not beat in situ. Under appropriate culture conditions they rapidly commence beating, albeit less vigorously than similarly explanted hearts of comparably staged normal siblings. As part of this symposium, we have shown a cine record demonstrating heartbeat in mutant hearts and comparing it to normal heartbeat. Myocardia of normal embryos exhibit a characteristic pattern of birefringent, striated myofibrils. Mutants of the same stage contain hearts with birefringent fibrils organized in a pattern similar to that found in normal myocardia. A striking difference is that obvious striations are lacking in fibrils of the mutant. Electrophoresis of normal and mutant hearts in SDS-polyacrylamide gels shows that the major myofibrillar proteins are present. We conclude that induction of c/c hearts has been relatively normal and suggest that, due to the rapidity of recovery, the observed phenomena are perhaps due to something as simple as a defect in ionic conditions.


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