Neural pattern in vertebrates has been thought to be induced in dorsal ectoderm by 'vertical' signals from underlying, patterned dorsal mesoderm. In the frog Xenopus laevis, it has recently been found that general neural differentiation and some pattern can be induced by 'planar' signals, i.e. those passing through the single plane formed by dorsal mesoderm and ectoderm, without the need for ve...

Beat induction is best described by analogy to the activities of hand clapping or foot tapping, and involves finding important metrical components in an auditory signal, usually music. Though beat induction is intuitively easy to understand it is difficult to define and still more difficult to perform automatically. We will present a model of beat induction that uses a spiking neural network as...

SUMMARY. — The molecularization of developmental biology was originally seen as a challenge to the integrity of that discipline. However, important new insights from the analysis of gene expression soon transformed the field from one of experimental anatomy to one of developmental genetics. One of the main areas to be transformed from an anatomical to a molecular study was « primary embryonic i...

A growing body of work indicates that neural induction may be initiated prior to the establishment of the gastrula mesodermal organizer. Here, we examine neural induction in Xenopus embryos in which mesoderm induction has been blocked by Cerberus-short, a reagent that specifically inhibits Nodal-related (Xnr) signals. We find that extensive neural structures with cyclopic eyes and brain tissue ...

Syndecan-4 (Syn4) is a heparan sulphate proteoglycan that is able to bind to some growth factors, including FGF, and can control cell migration. Here we describe a new role for Syn4 in neural induction in Xenopus. Syn4 is expressed in dorsal ectoderm and becomes restricted to the neural plate. Knockdown with antisense morpholino oligonucleotides reveals that Syn4 is required for the expression ...

How does the vertebrate embryo make a nervous system? This complex question has been at the center of developmental biology for many years. The earliest step in this process - the induction of neural tissue - is intimately linked to patterning of the entire early embryo, and the molecular and embryological of basis these processes are beginning to emerge. Here, we analyze classic and cutting-ed...

The response to neural induction depends on the presence of inducing signals and on the state of competence of the responding tissue. The epiblast of the chick embryo loses its ability to respond to neural induction by the organizer (Hensen's node) between stages 4 and 4+. We find that the pattern of expression of the L5(220) antigen closely mirrors the changes in competence of the epiblast in ...