Affiliation:
1. Department of Biology, University of Oklahoma, 730 Van Vleet Oval, Norman, OK, 73019, USA
Abstract
The origin of the vertebrate head is one of the great unresolved issues in vertebrate evolutionary-developmental biology. Although many of the novelties in the vertebrate head and pharynx are derived from the neural crest, it is still unknown how early vertebrates patterned the neural crest within the ancestral body plan they inherited from invertebrate chordates. Here, using a basal vertebrate, the sea lamprey, we show that homologues of Semaphorin3F ligand and its Neuropilin receptors show complementary and dynamic patterns of expression that correlate with key periods of neural crest development (migration, patterning of cranial neural crest-derived structures). Using CRISPR/Cas9-mediated mutagenesis, we demonstrate that lamprey Sema3F is essential for patterning of neural crest-derived melanocytes, cranial ganglia and the head skeleton, but is not required for neural crest migration or patterning of trunk neural crest derivatives. Based on comparisons with jawed vertebrates, our results suggest that the deployment of Nrp-Sema3F signalling, along with other intercellular guidance cues, was pivotal in allowing early vertebrates to organize and pattern cranial neural crest cells into many of the hallmark structures that define the vertebrate head.
Publisher
The Company of Biologists
Subject
Developmental Biology,Molecular Biology
Cited by
16 articles.
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