Trunk neural crest cells are generated at the border between the neural plate and nonneural ectoderm, where they initiate a distinct program of gene expression, undergo an epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), and delaminate from the neuroepithelium. Here, we provide evidence that members of three families of transcription induce these properties in premigratory neural crest cells. Sox9 acts...

Neural crest stem cells arise within the central nervous system but then undergo an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition to migrate away and contribute to the peripheral nervous system and craniofacial skeleton. Here we show that DNA methyltransferase 3B (DNMT3B) is responsible for the loss of competence of dorsal neural tube cells to generate emigrating neural crest cells. DNMT3B knockdown res...

Orthotopic transplantation experiments have shown that in birds, under normal conditions, mesectodermal capabilities seem restricted to the cephalic neural crest down to the level of the 5th somite. In the present study the mesectodermal capabilities of trunk and lumbar neural crest were investigated at early stages of development by heterotopic, heterospecific transplantation of the neural pri...

Splotch mice, which harbour mutations in the Pax3 gene, exhibit neural crest-related abnormalities including pigmentation defects, reduced or absent dorsal root ganglia and failure of cardiac outflow tract septation in homozygotes. Although splotch neural crest cells fail to colonise target tissues, they initiate migration in vivo and appear to migrate as well as wild type neural crest cells in...

BACKGROUND In the trunk of avian embryos, neural crest migration through the somites is segmental, with neural crest cells entering the rostral half of each somitic sclerotome but avoiding the caudal half. Little is known about the molecular nature of the cues-intrinsic to the somites-that are responsible for this segmental migration of neural crest cells. RESULTS We demonstrate that Eph-rela...

It is now accepted that ancestral vertebrates underwent two rounds of genome duplication. Here we test the possible utility of these genome duplication events as a reference time for the evolutionary history of vertebrates, by tracing the molecular evolutionary history of the genes involved in vertebrate neural crest development. For most transcription factors that are involved in neural crest ...

The neural crest is a migratory cell population that gives rise to multiple cell types in the vertebrate embryo. The intrinsic determinants that segregate neural crest cells from multipotential dorsal progenitors within the neural tube are poorly defined. In this study, we show that the winged helix transcription factor Foxd3 is expressed in both premigratory and migratory neural crest cells. F...

Here, we explore whether silencing via promoter DNA methylation plays a role in neural versus neural crest cell lineage decisions. We show that DNA methyltransferase3A (DNMT3A) promotes neural crest specification by directly mediating repression of neural genes like Sox2 and Sox3. DNMT3A is expressed in the neural plate border, and its knockdown causes ectopic Sox2 and Sox3 expression at the ex...

Pinch1, an adaptor protein composed of 5 LIM domains, has been suggested to play an important role in multiple cellular processes. We found that Pinch1 is highly expressed in neural crest cells and their derivatives. To examine the requirement for Pinch1 in neural crest development, we generated neural crest conditional Pinch1 knockout mice using the Wnt1-Cre/loxP system. Neural crest condition...

As they initiate migration in vertebrate embryos, neural crest cells are enriched for methylation cycle enzymes, including S-adenosylhomocysteine hydrolase (SAHH), the only known enzyme to hydrolyze the feedback inhibitor of trans-methylation reactions. The importance of methylation in neural crest migration is unknown. Here, we show that SAHH is required for emigration of polarized neural cres...