Hoxa 11 is a murine Abdominal-B-type homeobox gene. The structure of this gene is presented, including genomic and cDNA sequence. The cDNA includes the complete open reading frame and based on primer extension results is near full length. Surprisingly, the antisense strand of Hoxa 11 was found to be transcribed. Moreover, these antisense transcripts were processed and polyadenylated. The developmental expression patterns for both sense and antisense transcripts were examined using serial section and whole-mount in situ hybridizations. Hoxa 11 transcription patterns were defined in the limbs, kidney and stromal cells surrounding the Mullerian and Wolffian ducts. Of particular interest, in the developing limbs, the sense and antisense transcripts showed complementary expression patterns, with antisense RNAs increasing in abundance in regions where sense RNAs were diminishing in abundance. Furthermore, targeted mutation of Hoxa 11 is shown to result in both male and female sterility. The female mutants produce normal ova, which develop properly post-fertilization when transferred to wild-type surrogate mothers. The Hoxa 11 homozygous mutants are shown to provide a defective uterine environment. The mutant males exhibited a malformation of the vas deferens that resembles a partial homeotic transformation to an epididymis. In addition, the mutant testes fail to descend properly into the scrotum and, likely as a result, spermatogenesis is perturbed.

Extremely large capacity is needed in the next decade for the application of optical storage memory. To achieve higher data transfer rates page-oriented optical memories have been suggested as replacements for current bit-serial memories in large-capacity memory systems. Although many research endeavors have been concentrated on the development of page-oriented memory, a practical optical storage system also depends on the demonstration of optical read head technologies that are capable of reading and processing data in page-oriented fashion. This thesis explores the possibility for implementing a device to interface an ultra-high density optical storage media with an existing electronic computing hardware. The page-oriented data read capability of a next generation read-head device is demonstrated using current CMOS technology, which is compatible with other electronic circuitry. The circuit was designed and fabricated using a conventional CMOS process. A CMOS based photodetector, which is an unconventional photonic device, was integrated monolithically onto each individual pixel on the chip, as well as the CMOS photoreceiver circuit and other control units. A 2-D pixel array was presented to realize the page-read mode. Test results verify our design of the high sensitivity photoreceiver circuit and high system throughput of the pixel array structure. The final system implementation is expected to serve as the front-end in a page-oriented optical memory system. iv In the first part of the thesis, a brief introduction to the motivation and background of this project is given. A literature review is presented with an emphasis placed on the design of high performance photoreceivers. The second part of the thesis describes the design, simulation and analysis of the proposed read-head device. Individual components and the whole system are characterized and simulation results shown. While the final system is designed for implementation in a 0.35µm CMOS technology, fabrication costs limited the project to implementation of a test chip in 1.5µm CMOS technology. Finally, the performance evaluation of the fabricated test chip is presented. v vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and at the very outset, I'd like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Beyette for his mentoring and guidance on this project, as well as on other academic and life issues critical to my future study. Great thanks for Dr. Boyd, Dr. Ferendeci and Dr. Harold Carter of reviewing my thesis and serving as my thesis committee member. Deep appreciations toward Arvind Chokhani and Sathya Vageeshwar for their inva luable discussions on receiver design and Jianjing for his help on the system test. I would also like to thank my colleagues and seniors in our PSDL group, Prashant Bhadri, Prosenjit Mal, Kuntao Ye,