Word: silk
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Silk stable-colors shining in the light,-Light blue, brown cap; all scarlet; white with green...
...plugged up the silk tubes with melted wax, leaving the mouth open. When the liquid-producing drug was administered, no liquid appeared until the wax was removed. Kafatos was certain that the liquid did come from the tubes. Yet when he mashed the tubes, expecting to find the enzyme, no enzyme was present. One of Kafatos' typical brainstorms saved the day. He realized that the liquid he had been collecting was produced by two glands. The old silk tubes produced the inert part of the liquid while a special gland on the face secreted the enzyme itself. Kafatos substantiated these...
...soon noticed that there was some white, crystal-like powder on the face of a moth that was ready to emerge from its cocoon. Most of the enzyme crystals were on two cone-shaped structures on the face, called maxillae, which scientists had hither-to believed useless to the silk moth. Kafatos also found concentrated enzyme solution in the maxillae's cells, which squeeze the solution out through fine tubes leading to the surface of the maxillae. The enzyme, mixed with the liquid of the old silk tubes, gets painted over the cocoon's tip, thus dissolving the cocoon...
Puzzled by the changing function of the moth's old silk tubes and fascinated by the process which commits cells to their various fates, Kafatos turned to developmental biology on the cellular level. He presents his own findings in this field in two lectures in his course. He often involves his undergraduates, as well as his graduate students, in his projects. Kafatos is investigating both how cells become specialized and how they sometimes change from one specific function to another. These questions are crucial for man's understanding of the cell's nature. Furthermore, since cancerous cells are previously normal...
Kafatos' first step in testing the reality of informosomes was to get an idea of the composition of his messenger-carrying particles in silk worms. Ribosomes are about 50 per cent protein and informosomes, which may be similar to ribosomes, have been postulated by the Russians to contain a higher amount of protein. Chemical analysis of the particles suspected to be informosomes was impossible because Kafatos was dealing with such minute amounts of particles. Finally he turned to a method for testing a particle's density devised ten years ago by Harvard's Matthew Meselson, professor of Biology. Particles...