Molecular Mechanisms underlying Embryonic Craniofacial Structure Development

SDRIGOTTI MARÍA ANTONELA; WEINER ANDREA; CALCATERRA NORA

Santa Cruz

Congreso; V International Meeting of the Latin American Society for Developmental Biology; 2010

Sociedad Latinoamericana de Biolgía del Desarrollo

The vertebrate head is a composite structure whose formation begins early in development, at neural plate stages. Cranial neural crest (CNC) cells play essential roles in rostral head development. However, the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying how this formation takes place are still largely unknown. The zinc-finger cellular nucleic acid binding protein (CNBP) has been reported to play essential roles during head development. This protein, which is specifically expressed in the embryonic cephalic region, has been reported to be responsible for cell fate, as well as for the control of CNC proliferation and survival balance. Using the zebrafish model, we are trying to elucidate the CNBP role during neural crest (NC) development. Transiently inducible gain-of-function (wild-type CNBP) and loss-of-function (by means of CNBP dominant negative forms) embryos showed aberrant development, mostly in the head, when induced at early stages of NC formation. Zebrafish transgenic lines over-expressing these two CNBP variants were generated by using the Tol2 transposon vector system. Juvenile specimens over-expressing wild-type CNBP exhibited more pigmented cells and were bigger than control animals. On the other hand, juveniles over-expressing dominant negative CNBP manifested a delayed in development, craniofacial abnormalities, low pigmentation and small body sizes compared to controls. Further analysis of these transgenic lines, together with the generation of inducible lines over-expressing the above-mentioned CNBP forms, will allow us to complete our study about the in vivo participation of CNBP in NC development.