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Development

How to get a head

Nature Reviews Neuroscience volume 2, page 81 (2001)Cite this article

Although the effects of some of these mutations are quite severe, no single mutation is known to abolish formation of anterior structures completely. However, as Gonzalez et al. have recently shown in Genes and Development , mutations in just two genes — boz and the Chordin gene chordino (din) — act synergistically to prevent head and trunk formation. In the boz din mutant, most of the cells of the embryo accumulated at the posterior end, forming an enlarged tailbud. It was proposed that most of the cells normally destined for the neural lineage had been respecified as nonneural ectoderm. This was confirmed by the dorsal expansion of nonneuronal ectoderm marker gata3 expression at the expense of the expression domain of the neural marker HuC . Although the embryos showed a generalized increase in apoptosis, this could not explain the selective loss of dorso-anterior tissues. Furthermore, to show that excessive BMP signalling was responsible for the loss of anterior structures, the authors introduced the swirltc300 ( swr) mutation, which downregulates BMP signalling, into boz din mutants. As predicted, most anterior structures were restored in the boz din;swr triple mutants.

The authors propose a model in which the interaction of just two genetic pathways, one involving bozozok and the other involving Chordin, is both necessary and sufficient to permit development of the head and trunk through inhibition of BMP signalling. Therefore, although no single factor has emerged as a master regulator of anterior development in vertebrates, the genetic mechanisms involved have been shown to be surprisingly simple.

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References

ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER

  1. Gonzalez, E. M. et al. Head and trunk in zebrafish arise via coinhibition of BMP signalling by bozozok and chordino . Genes Dev. 14, 3087– 3092 (2000)

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FURTHER READING

  1. Chang, C. and Hemmati-Brivanlou, A. Cell fate determination in embryonic ectoderm. J. Neurobiol. 36, 128–151 (1998)

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Authors
  1. Heather Wood
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Lilianna Solnica-Krezel's lab

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BMP antagonists and neural induction

Vertebrate central nervous system: pattern formation

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Wood, H. How to get a head. Nat Rev Neurosci 2, 81 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35053557

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