Tuyển tập các báo cáo nghiên cứu về y học được đăng trên tạp chí y học Minireview cung cấp cho các bạn kiến thức về ngành y đề tài: New genes in the evolution of the neural crest differentiation program. | Open Access Research New genes in the evolution of the neural crest differentiation program Juan-Ramon Martinez-Morales Thorsten Henrich Mirana Ramialison and Joachim Wittbrodt Address Developmental Biology Unit EMBL MeyerhofstraBe 69117 Heidelberg Germany. These authors contributed equally to this work. Correspondence Joachim Wittbrodt. Email Juan-Ramon Martinez-Morales. E-mail Published 12 March 2007 Genome Biology 2007 8 R36 doi 186 gb-2007-8-3-r36 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at http 2007 8 3 R36 Received 15 September 2006 Revised 4 January 2007 Accepted 12 March 2007 2007 Martinez-Morales et al. licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http licenses by which permits unrestricted use distribution and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background Development of the vertebrate head depends on the multipotency and migratory behavior of neural crest derivatives. This cell population is considered a vertebrate innovation and accordingly chordate ancestors lacked neural crest counterparts. The identification of neural crest specification genes expressed in the neural plate of basal chordates in addition to the discovery of pigmented migratory cells in ascidians has challenged this hypothesis. These new findings revive the debate on what is new and what is ancient in the genetic program that controls neural crest formation. Results To determine the origin of neural crest genes we analyzed Phenotype Ontology annotations to select genes that control the development of this tissue. Using a sequential blast pipeline we phylogenetically classified these genes as well as those associated with other tissues in order to define tissue-specific profiles of gene emergence. Of neural crest genes 9 .
