INVESTIGADORES
AYBAR Manuel Javier
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Regulation of the Bhh/Gli pathway in Xenopus neural crest development
Autor/es:
TRISTÁN H. AGUERO; JUAN P. FERNÁNDEZ; GUILLERMO VEGA LÓPEZ; MANUEL J. AYBAR
Lugar:
Cancún, México
Reunión:
Congreso; First Panamerican Congress in Developmental Biology (66th Meeting Society for Developmental Biology,USA; 8th Meeting Sociedad Mexicana de Biologia del Desarrollo y 3rd Meeting Latin American Society for Developmental Biology); 2007
Institución organizadora:
SDB (USA) y LASDB
Resumen:
In the embryonic development the Hedgehog proteins represent instructive cellular signals that control cell specification, proliferation and survival. We have previously shown that Banded hedgehog (Bhh) and Gli3 expression overlap with neural crest (NC) markers in the prospective NC and functional experiments have shown that both genes participate in the NC induction increasing the expression of NC markers. In this work we have analyzed in more detail the role of Bhh/Gli pathway in cellular processes and focused our analysis on regulatory aspects of the pathway in the NC development. By using inhibitors of cell proliferation and a conditional gain of function approach we show that Gli3 overexpression produce changes in the NC cell fate and not in cell proliferation. A morpholino against Gli3 was able to block the increase in NC markers produced by Bhh indicating that the control of specification by Bhh is mediated by Gli3. We have cloned new components of the pathway, the Xenopus homologous genes Cos2 and Sufu observing a correlation between the NC markers and the expression patterns of both genes. To evaluate the regulatory role of these genes in the development of the NC we followed a gain-of-function approach in which the increase of Cos2 produced a decrease in the NC markers suggesting that it could negatively regulate the pathway. In addition, the temporal requirements of hedgehog signaling for NC induction has been analyzed by grafting cyclopamine-soaked beads into the neural fold from late gastrula stage. Our results show that intracellular components of the Bhh/Gli pathway are key regulators of NC induction in Xenopus embryos.