SGER: Mitosis Promoting Factor, A Possible Measure of Instantaneous Growth Rate in Teleost Larvae

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A major effort in fisheries ecology has been to develop biochemical tools for quantifying instantaneous growth rate and the nutritional dynamics of recruiting fish larvae juveniles. Recent studies have lead to a succession of innovative techniques. Due to problems of interpretation with these methods, current trend in recruitment studies is to use combination of biochemical, histological, and morphometric techniques. Thus, what is needed is a truly specific biochemical indicator of the actual rate of cell growth at any point in time. Recent advances in the biochemical regulation of the cell cycle indicate that a protein kinase, Mitosis Promoting Factor (MPF), acts as the "master oscillator" of the cell cycle. Measurement of MPF activity suggest that MPF has tremendous potential as a highly specific measure of cellular proliferation and growth. To test this idea, DiMichele will develop analytical techniques, verify the proportion of cells committed to mitosis in asynchronous cell populations, and fit the theoretical model to known whole animal growth rates in the red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus. If the model is verified, the biochemical measurement of MPF will have a tremendous potential as a specific measure of instantaneous growth and cellular proliferation in heterogeneous populations.