Chicken trunk neural crest migration visualized with HNK1

Abstract

The development of the nervous system involves cells remaining within the neural tube (CNS) and a group of cells that delaminate from the dorsal neural tube and migrate extensively throughout the developing embryo called neural crest cells (NCC). These cells are a mesenchymal highly migratory group of cells that give rise to a wide variety of cell derivatives: melanocytes, sensory neurons, bone, Schwann cells, etc. But not all NCC can give rise to all derivatives, they have fate restrictions based on their axial level of origin: cranial, vagal, trunk and sacral. Our aim was to provide a thorough presentation on how does trunk neural crest cell migration looks in the chicken embryo, in wholemount and in sections using the unique chicken marker HNK1. The description presented here makes a good guideline for those interested in viewing trunk NCC migration patterns. We show how before HH14 there are few trunk NCC delaminating and migrating, but between HH15 through HH19 trunk NCC delaminate in large numbers. Melanocytes precursors begin to enter the dorsolateral pathway by HH17. We found that by HH20 HNK1 is not a valid good marker for NCC and that HNK1 is a better marker than Sox10 when looking at neural crest cells morphology and migration details.

Melanoblast development coincides with the late emerging cells from the dorsal neural tube in turtle Trachemys scripta

“…1 ). In chicken embryos, at stage HH17 migratory trunk neural crest cells are formed, and at stage HH25 no trunk neural crest cells are formed 18 ; electroporation of GFP into the lumen of the neural tube at HH17 embryo in ovo demonstrated both delaminating and migrating cells 24 hours after electroporation that matched the migratory neural crest cells visualized by anti-HNK-1 antibody (SI Fig. 1A–D ).…”

FGF signaling is required for chemokinesis and ventral migration of trunk neural crest cells

“…Furthermore, N-cadherin has been shown to stimulate Akt-1 signaling-which could also explain how the DNFGFR1-electroporated NCCs were rescued in the presence of ectopic expression of N-cadherin. 85 While the role of N-cadherin rescue is not completely understood, the ability of N-cadherin to regulate small RhoGTPases adds further evidence to the activation and importance of these molecules for ventral NCC migration.…”

Molecular Events Controlling Cessation of Trunk Neural Crest Migration and Onset of Differentiation

“…We took advantage of the fact that chicken tNCCs express high levels on their cell surface of the antigen, HNK1, shortly after emigration from the neural tube all the way to the time of gangliogenesis (Strobl-Mazzulla and Simoes-Costa et al, 2014;Giovannone et al, 2015). We started by isolating trunk regions from HH16 ( Figure 1A), this stage is characterized by the robust level of migrating tNCCs (Giovannone et al, 2015). The other set of cells were isolated from the trunk of HH19 chicken embryos that corresponds to tNCCs that are beginning to condense into dorsal root ganglia (DRG) ( Figure 1B).…”

“…In order to examine the overall molecular changes that occur at post-migratory stages of trunk NCC (tNCC) we took a genomics approach and generated a profile of the molecular changes that accompany cessation of migration and aggregation into DRG. These changes can be clearly separated by isolating tNCC from two stages in chicken embryo: during peak of tNCC migration (HH16) and when the future DRG tNCC begin to stop next to the neural tube (HH19) (Giovannone et al, 2015). We generated a tNCC macroarray library of purified chicken tNCC at these two stages and then compared their gene expression by probing an arrayed cDNA library.…”