An assay system to study migratory behavior of cranial neural crest cells in Xenopus |
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Authors: | A Borchers H-H Epperlein D Wedlich |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Biochemistry, University of Ulm, Albert-Einstein-Allee 11, 89081 Ulm, Germany E-mail: Doris.Wedlich@medizin.uni-ulm.de Tel.: +49-731-5023281, Fax: +49-731-5023277, DE;(2) Department of Anatomy, University of Dresden, Fetscherstrasse 74, 01307 Dresden, Germany, DE |
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Abstract: | An increasing number of genes are known to show expression in the cranial neural crest area. So far it is very difficult to
analyze their effect on neural crest cell migration because of the lack of transplantation techniques. This paper presents
a simple method to study the migratory behavior of cranial neural crest cells by homo- and heterotopic transplantations: Green
fluorescent protein (GFP) RNA was injected into one blastomere of Xenopus laevis embryos at the 2-cell stage. The cranial neural crest area of stage 14 embryos was transplanted into the head or trunk region
of an uninjected host embryo, and the migration was monitored by GFP fluorescence. The transplants were further examined by
double immunostaining and confocal microscopy to trace migratory routes inside the embryo, and to exclude contaminations of
grafts with foreign tissues. Our results demonstrate that we developed a highly efficient and reproducible technique to study
the migratory ability of cranial neural crest cells. It offers the possibility to analyze genes involved in neural crest cell
migration by coinjecting their RNA with that of GFP.
Received: 28 September 1999 / Accepted: 17 November 1999 |
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Keywords: | Neural crest Transplantation Xenopus laevis Cell migration |
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