Developmental Biology Protocols, Volume 2

The goal Developmental Biology Protocols, Volume II is to give the readers a set of contemporary and practical experimental tools dealing with a wide-ranging spectrum of topics in developmental biology research. The beginning chapters present studies on Drosophila and Xenopus in order to illustrate the power of these systems for deciphering the experimental principles of developmental biology, and practical details on a number of organ/tissue systems in vertebrates are given, including mammary gland, heart, skeleton, limb, thymus, liver, and skin. Methods of the analysis of apoptosis, as well as the many diverse and powerful approaches that have been developed to produce transgenic animals are presented in the following sections. One section contains chapters representing a cross-section of various examples of the mechanisms responsible for abnormal development, and the experimental approaches currently used in analyzing the underlying mechanisms. The volume concludes with a detailed presentation of exciting, recent developments in gene targeting strategies and the application of the Cre/LoxP site-specific recombination for conditional gene knockout.