Hijacking Of Neural Crest Genes

In vertebrates, the peripheral nervous system and the craniofacial skeleton develop from a specific set of cells, known as neural crest cells. In this report, researchers in the laboratory of Dr. Marianne Bronner-Fraser at the California Institute of Technology have used the amphioxus genome sequence to investigate how this vertebrate-specific cell type evolved from an invertebrate ancestor.

More: continued here

Filed under: Biology on June 19th, 2008