objective: the neural crest is a transient structure of early vertebrate embryos that generates neural crest cells (nccs). these cells can migrate throughout the body and produce a diverse array of mature tissue types. due to the ethical and technical problems surrounding the isolation of these early human embryo cells, researchers have focused on in vitro studies to produce nccs and increase t...

lectin binding histochemistry was performed on the developing sympathetic ganglionic cells to investigate the distribution and density of defined carbohydrate terminals on the cell surface glycoproteins during autonomic system morphogenesis. sprague-dauley rat embryos from 9th gestational day to birth were fixed and paraffinized. serial sections of these specimens were incubated with different ...

Among the families of transcription factors expressed at the neural plate border, Sox proteins have been shown to regulate multiple aspects of neural crest development. Sox8, Sox9 and Sox10, exhibit overlapping expression domains in neural crest progenitors, and studies in mouse suggest that Sox8 functions redundantly with Sox9 and Sox10 during neural crest development. Here, we show that in Xe...

Previous analyses of single neural crest cell trajectories have suggested important roles for interactions between neural crest cells and the environment, and amongst neural crest cells. To test the relative contribution of intrinsic versus extrinsic information in guiding cells to their appropriate sites, we ablated subpopulations of premigratory chick hindbrain neural crest and followed the r...

Migration of neural crest cells is an elaborate process that requires the delamination of cells from an epithelium and cell movement into an extracellular matrix. In this work, it is shown for the first time that the non-canonical Wnt signalling [planar cell polarity (PCP) or Wnt-Ca2+] pathway controls migration of neural crest cells. By using specific Dsh mutants, we show that the canonical Wn...

The differentiation of neural crest cells from progenitors located in the dorsal neural tube appears to involve three sequential steps: the specification of premigratory neural crest cell fate, the delamination of these cells from the neural epithelium and the migration of neural crest cells in the periphery. BMP signaling has been implicated in the specification of neural crest cell fate but t...

We examined the role of Delta signaling in specification of two derivatives in zebrafish neural plate: Rohon-Beard spinal sensory neurons and neural crest. deltaA-expressing Rohon-Beard neurons are intermingled with premigratory neural crest cells in the trunk lateral neural plate. Embryos homozygous for a point mutation in deltaA, or with experimentally reduced delta signalling, have supernume...

The neural crest is a transient migratory population of stem cells derived from the dorsal neural folds at the border between neural and non-neural ectoderm. Following induction, prospective neural crest cells are segregated within the neuroepithelium and then delaminate from the neural tube and migrate into the periphery, where they generate multiple differentiated cell types. The intrinsic de...

The neural crest is a unique population of mitotically active, multipotent progenitors that arise at the vertebrate neural plate border. Here, we show that the helix-loop-helix transcriptional regulator Id3 has a novel role in cell cycle progression and survival of neural crest progenitors in Xenopus. Id3 is localized at the neural plate border during gastrulation and neurulation, overlapping t...