Functional analysis of Hairy genes in Xenopus neural crest initial specification and cell migration

GUILLERMO VEGA LÓPEZ; MARCELA BONANO; CELESTE TRÍBULO; JUAN PABLO FERNÁNDEZ; TRISTÁN H. AGÜERO; MANUEL AYBAR

DEVELOPMENTAL DYNAMICS

WILEY-LISS, DIV JOHN WILEY & SONS INC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2015 vol. 244 p. 908 - 1013

1058-8388

Background: Neural crest formation is one of the fundamental processes in the early stages of embryonic development in vertebrates.This transient and multipotent embryonic cell population is able to generate a variety of tissues and cell types in theadult body. hairy genes are transcription factors that contain a basic helix?loop?helix domain which binds to DNA. In Xenopusthree hairy genes are known: hairy1, hairy2a, and hairy2b. The requirement of hairy genes was explored in early neural crestdevelopment although the late requirements of these genes during neural crest maintenance, migration and derivatives formationare still unknown. Results: In this work, we extended the analysis of Xenopus hairy genes expression patterns anddescribed new domains of expression. Functional analysis showed that hairy genes are required for the induction and migrationof the neural crest and for the control of apoptosis. Moreover, we showed that hairy genes function as transcriptionalrepressors and that they are down-regulated by bone morphogenetic protein-Smad signaling and positively regulated by theNotch/Delta-Su(h) pathway. Conclusions: Our results indicate that hairy genes have a functional equivalence between themand that they are required for multiple processes during neural crest development.