Expression and functional analysis of Endothelin Receptor B in Xenopus neural crest development

GABRIELA MARRANZINO; MARCELA BONANO; MARÍA EUGENIA PEREZ COLLADO; MANUEL J. AYBAR

Chascomús

Jornada; XV Jornadas Anuales de la Sociedad Argentina de Biología; 2013

Sociedad Argentina de Biología

The emergence of the neural crest cell population involves the integration of several signaling pathways as well as embryonic tissue interactions. Despite recent progress in this area, there are many aspects of neural crest development such as the genes involved in this process which are not very well understood. The aim of this work was to increase the knowledge of the signaling pathway mediated by the Endothelin Receptor B (Ednrb) in the formation of Xenopus laevis neural crest. We performed the molecular cloning of Ednrb cDNA and we subsequently did an analysis of the spatiotemporal expression pattern of this gene. We analyzed embryos at different developmental stages and it was found that the transcripts of Ednrb in Xenopus laevis became visible from stage 21 in expression zones located in the dorsal region of the neural tube, in the notochord, otic vesicle, paraxial mesoderm and melanoblasts. We carried out functional studies through microinyection of Ednrb mRNA in Xenopus embryos. The overexpression of Ednrb increased Snail2 gene expression and decreased FoxD3 expression. These results suggest that the signaling pathway mediated by Ednrb could not be involved in the induction of neural crest cells and it could not exert any early function in the development of this cell population. Overall the results presented here suggest that Ednrb could be active in the migration and differentiation phase of neural crest development.