Mechanisms for shaping and folding sheets of cells during development are poorly understood. An example is the complex reorganisation of the forebrain neural plate during neurulation, which must fold a sheet into a tube while evaginating two eyes from a single contiguous domain within the neural plate. We, for the first time, track these cell rearrangements to show that forebrain morphogenesis ...

Neurulation has been suggested to involve both factors intrinsic and extrinsic to the neuroepithelium. In the curly tail (ct) mutant mouse embryo, final closure of the posterior neuropore is delayed to varying extents resulting in neural tube defects. Evidence was presented recently (Brook et al., 1991 Development 113, 671-678) to suggest that enhanced ventral curvature of the caudal region is ...

Early chick embryos were explanted on culture media containing mercaptoethanol and dithiothreitol in concentrations reaching 10~ M and 10~ M respectively. Nuclear migration was found to occur normally even under such thiol concentration, which is more than required to inhibit neurulation. Electron miscroscopy revealed that microtubules were not affected in their number and morphology. However, ...

In the 3rd week of embryonic development, both the neurulation as well as the development of the cardiovascular system begins. The neurulation denotes the formation of the neural tube in the development of the central nervous system. These complex processes are a combination of numerous factors and interactions. Embryology is always relevant for the understanding of an organ. By understanding t...