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

GUILLERMO A. VEGA LOPEZ; MARCELA BONANO; CELESTE TRÍBULO; JUAN P. FERNÁNDEZ; TRISTÁN H. AGÜERO; MANUEL J. AYBAR

DEVELOPMENTAL DYNAMICS

WILEY-LISS, DIV JOHN WILEY & SONS INC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2015 vol. 244 p. 988 - 1013

1058-8388

Neural crest formation is one of the fundamental processes in the early stages of embryonic development in ver-tebrates. 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 for-mation are 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 migra-tion of 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.