1990 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary
Morphological Studies of Migrating Cranial Neural Crest Cells in Mouse Embryos
| Project/Area Number |
63570021
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| Research Category |
Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
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| Allocation Type | Single-year Grants |
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| Research Field |
General anatomy (including Histology/Embryology)
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| Research Institution | Kinki University |
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Principal Investigator |
YASUDA Yoshiko Kinki University school of Medicine Department of Anatomy, Associate Professor, 医学部・解剖学, 助教授 (10025629)
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| Project Period (FY) |
1988 – 1990
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| Keywords | neural crest cells / cranial region / 9-day-old mouse embryos / retinoic acid / light and electron microscopy / immunostain / anti-choline acetyltransferase |
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| Research Abstract |
To clarify an involvement of migrating cranial neural crest cells in formation of largest organs, the differentiation of neural crest cells was investigated in mouse embryos treated with or without all-trans-retinoic acid (RA) in utero. The embryos were derived from dams given 60, 40 or Omg/kg of RA on day 8 of gestation and sacrificed on day 9 of gestation. They were processed for light and electron microscopy, and immunostained with anti-choline acetyltransferase (CAT) and anti-tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) serum to demonstrate the effect of RA on the enzymes that are sepcific markers for the migrating neural crest cells.
Light microscopy revealed loss of podia-like projections in the embryos exposed to RA. Electron microscopy showed pleomophic nuclei with exceptionally large nucleoli composed almost entirely of the granular portion ; the cytoplasm contained monosomes, polysomes plus monosomes, or polysomes only. CAT-positive cells in the mesenchymal regions were significantly fewer in the experimental embryos than in the controls. No TH-positive cells were detected in the mesenchyme.
These findings suggest that exogenous excess RA affects the characteristics of migrating neural crest cells themselves by intereference in the synthesis of the enzyme proteins.
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