Current Topics in Developmental Biology

Fertilization and Activation of Development, Volume 162 in the Current Topics in Developmental Biology series, highlights new advances in the field, with this new volume presenting interesting chapters written by an international board of authors.
Chapters in this new release include Fertilization and the fast block to polyspermy in the African Clawed Frog, Xenopus laevis: A historical perspective, The Mammalian Egg's Zona Pellucida, Fertilization, and Fertility, Function, structure, and regulation of the broadly conserved gamete membrane fusion protein, HAP2, Gamete activation for fertilization and seed development in flowering plants, Paternal contributions to mammalian zygote, and much more.

Additional sections cover Ovarian follicle formation and activation, Cytoskeletal dynamics in gamete (pro)nuclear migration across flowering plants, animals, and yeast, and Luteinizing hormone-induced changes in the structure of mammalian preovulatory follicles.

• Presents a comprehensive exploration of the fertilization process, including gamete interaction, fusion, and early embryonic development
• Provides in-depth analysis of the molecular mechanisms underlying fertilization, sperm-egg recognition, and activation of embryonic development
• Examines the key events and signaling pathways involved in activating embryonic development post-fertilization

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