Neural Crest Development

From Embryology

Introduction

Human embryo neural crest cells (Week 4, stage 11)

The neural crest are bilaterally paired strips of cells arising in the ectoderm at the margins of the neural tube. These cells migrate to many different locations and differentiate into many cell types within the embryo. This means that many different systems (neural, skin, teeth, head, face, heart, adrenal glands, gastrointestinal tract) will also have a contribution fron the neural crest cells.

In the body region, neural crest cells also contribute the peripheral nervous system (both neurons and glia) consisting of sensory ganglia (dorsal root ganglia), sympathetic and parasympathetic ganglia and neural plexuses within specific tissues/organs.

In the head region, neural crest cells migrate into the pharyngeal arches (as shown in movie below) forming ectomesenchyme contributing tissues which in the body region are typically derived from mesoderm (cartilage, bone, and connective tissue).General neural development is also covered in Neural Notes.


Neural Crest Links: neural crest | Lecture - Early Neural | Lecture - Neural Crest Development | Lecture Movie | Schwann cell | adrenal | melanocyte | peripheral nervous system | enteric nervous system | cornea | cranial nerve neural crest | head | skull | cardiac neural crest | Nicole Le Douarin | Neural Crest Movies | neural crest abnormalities | Category:Neural Crest
Student Projects 2023: 1 Patterning neural border and NC | 2 NPB NEUcrest | 3 EMT and NC | 4 miRNA and NC | 5 Adrenal Gland and NC | 6 Melanocyte & Melanoma | 7 Neurocristopathies | Neural Crest
These projects are the sole work of undergraduate science students and may contain errors in fact or descriptions.


Historic Embryology - Neural Crest  
1879 Olfactory Organ | 1905 Cranial and Spinal Nerves | 1908 10 mm Peripheral | 1910 Mammal Sympathetic | 1920 Human Sympathetic | 1928 Cranial ganglia | 1939 10 Somite Embryo | 1942 Origin | 1957 Adrenal
System Links: Introduction | Cardiovascular | Coelomic Cavity | Endocrine | Gastrointestinal Tract | Genital | Head | Immune | Integumentary | Musculoskeletal | Neural | Neural Crest | Placenta | Renal | Respiratory | Sensory | Birth

Some Recent Findings

  • Dbx1-expressing cells are necessary for the survival of the mammalian anterior neural and craniofacial structures[1] "Development of the vertebrate forebrain and craniofacial structures are intimately linked processes, the coordinated growth of these tissues being required to ensure normal head formation. In this study, we identify five small subsets of progenitors expressing the transcription factor dbx1 in the cephalic region of developing mouse embryos at E8.5. ... Our results demonstrate that dbx1-expressing cells have a unique function during head development, notably by controlling cell survival in a non cell-autonomous manner."
  • Analysis of early human neural crest development[2] "The outstanding migration and differentiation capacities of neural crest cells (NCCs) have fascinated scientists since Wilhelm His described this cell population in 1868. Today, after intense research using vertebrate model organisms, we have gained considerable knowledge regarding the origin, migration and differentiation of NCCs. However, our understanding of NCC development in human embryos remains largely uncharacterized, despite the role the neural crest plays in several human pathologies. Here, we report for the first time the expression of a battery of molecular markers before, during, or following NCC migration in human embryos from Carnegie Stages (CS) 12 to 18. Our work demonstrates the expression of Sox9, Sox10 and Pax3 transcription factors in premigratory NCCs, while actively migrating NCCs display the additional transcription factors Pax7 and AP-2alpha. Importantly, while HNK-1 labels few migrating NCCs, p75(NTR) labels a large proportion of this population. However, the broad expression of p75(NTR) - and other markers - beyond the neural crest stresses the need for the identification of additional markers to improve our capacity to investigate human NCC development, and to enable the generation of better diagnostic and therapeutic tools."
  • Cranial neural crest migration: new rules for an old road.[3] "In this review, we discuss recent cellular and molecular discoveries of the CNCC migratory pattern. We focus on events from the time when CNCCs encounter the tissue adjacent to the neural tube and their travel through different microenvironments and into the branchial arches. We describe the patterning of discrete cell migratory streams that emerge from the hindbrain, rhombomere (r) segments r1-r7, and the signals that coordinate directed migration."
  • Derivation of neural crest cells from human pluripotent stem cells.[4] "Here we provide protocols for the step-wise differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) or human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) into neuroectodermal and NC cells using either the MS5 coculture system or a novel defined culture method based on pharmacological inhibition of bone morphogenetic protein and transforming growth factor-beta signaling pathways." (More? Stem Cells)


Neural Crest Migration

<Flowplayer width="408" height="320" autoplay="true">Chicken-neural crest migration 01.flv</Flowplayer> Chicken-neural-crest-migration-01.jpg

Chicken embryo sequence shows the migration of DiI-labeled neural crest cells towards the branchial arches as the embryo. White rings indicate migration of individual cells. Each image represents 10 confocal sections separated by 10 microns.

Movie Source: Original Neural Crest movies kindly provided by Paul Kulesa.[5]

Related Movies: Migration 01 | Migration 02 | Migration 03 | Migration 04 | Migration 05 | Migration 06 | Migration 07

Textbooks

Pharyngeal arch cartilages.jpg
The Developing Human, 8th edn.jpg Moore, K.L. & Persuad, T.V.N. (2008). The Developing Human: clinically oriented embryology (8th ed.). Philadelphia: Saunders.
Larsen's human embryology 4th edn.jpg Schoenwolf, G.C., Bleyl, S.B., Brauer, P.R. and Francis-West, P.H. (2009). Larsen’s Human Embryology (4th ed.). New York; Edinburgh: Churchill Livingstone.
Logo.png Hill, M.A. (2011) UNSW Embryology (11th ed.). Sydney:UNSW.
Neural Crest Links: neural crest | Lecture - Early Neural | Lecture - Neural Crest Development | Lecture Movie | Schwann cell | adrenal | melanocyte | peripheral nervous system | enteric nervous system | cornea | cranial nerve neural crest | head | skull | cardiac neural crest | Nicole Le Douarin | Neural Crest Movies | neural crest abnormalities | Category:Neural Crest
Student Projects 2023: 1 Patterning neural border and NC | 2 NPB NEUcrest | 3 EMT and NC | 4 miRNA and NC | 5 Adrenal Gland and NC | 6 Melanocyte & Melanoma | 7 Neurocristopathies | Neural Crest
These projects are the sole work of undergraduate science students and may contain errors in fact or descriptions.


Historic Embryology - Neural Crest  
1879 Olfactory Organ | 1905 Cranial and Spinal Nerves | 1908 10 mm Peripheral | 1910 Mammal Sympathetic | 1920 Human Sympathetic | 1928 Cranial ganglia | 1939 10 Somite Embryo | 1942 Origin | 1957 Adrenal

Objectives

Mouse neural crest (E10.5 ganglia Sox10)
  • Understand the structures derived from ectoderm.
  • Understand the formation of neural folds.
  • Identify the initial location of neural crest cells in the trilaminar embryo.
  • Identify pathways of neural crest migration throughout the embryo.
  • To know the major tissues to which neural crest cells contribute.
  • To know how abnormalities in development that result from abnormal neural crest cell migration.
  • Understand how neural crest cells contribute to the pharyngeal arches and the head structures they form.

Neural Crest Derivatives

Cranial neural crest

  • migration - dorsolaterally and into pharyngeal arches
  • craniofacial mesenchyme - cartilage, bone, cranial neurons, glia, and connective tissues of the face
  • pharyngeal arches and pouches - thymic cells, tooth odontoblasts, middle ear bones (ossicles) and jaw (mandible)

Cardiac neural crest

  • migration - located between the cranial and trunk neural crests, overlapping the anterior portion of the vagal neural crest.
  • pharyngeal arches - (3,4,6) melanocytes, neurons, cartilage, and connective tissue
  • heart outflow tract - aortic arch/pulmonary artery septum, large arteries wall musculoconnective tissue

Trunk neural crest

  • migration - two major pathways over somites (dorsolaterally) and between somite and neural tube (ventrolaterally)
  • dorsolateral - skin melanocytes
  • ventrolaterally - dorsal root ganglia, sympathetic ganglia, adrenal medulla, aortic nerve clusters

Vagal and sacral neural crest

  • migration - ventrally into surrounding splanchnic mesenchyme of gastrointestinal tract
  • splanchnic mesenchyme - parasympathetic (enteric) ganglia of the gut

Development Overview

The following cranial and trunk data is based upon 185 serially sectioned staged (Carnegie) human embryos.[6]

Cranial Neural Crest

  • stage 9 - an indication of mesencephalic neural crest
  • stage 10 - trigeminal, facial, and postotic components
  • stage 11 - crest-free zones are soon observable in rhombomere 1, 3, and 5
  • stage 12 - rhombomeres 6 and 7 neural crest migrate to pharyngeal arch 3 and then rostrad to the truncus arteriosus
  • stage 13 - nasal crest and the terminalis-vomeronasal complex are last of the cranial crest to appear

stages 9-14 - otic vesicle primordium descends

Vagal Neural Crest

Recent research suggests that the vagal neural crest cells are a transitional population that has evolved between the head and the trunk, taking separate pathways to the both the heart and to the gut.[7][8]

Trunk Neural Crest

Spinal ganglia increase in number over time and are in phase with the somites, though not their centre. There are 3 migratory pathways: ventrolateral between dermatomyotome and sclerotome, ventromedial between neural tube and sclerotomes, and lateral between surface ectoderm and dermatomyotome.

  • stage 13 - about 19 present
  • stage 14 - about 33 present
  • stage 15-23 - 30–35 ganglia

Neck and Shoulder

A mouse study using individually labelled cells of postotic neural crest followed the development of the shoulder girdle (clavicle and scapula) that connects the upper limb to the axial skeleton.[9]

  • Clavicle is a neural crest-mesodermal structure, posterior dermal clavicle mesoderm.
  • Cryptic cell boundaries traverse apparently homogeneous skeleton of the neck and shoulders.
  • Bones and muscles code of connectivity that mesenchymal stem cells of both neural crest and mesodermal origin obey
  • Neural crest anchors the head onto the anterior lining of the shoulder girdle
  • Hox-gene-controlled mesoderm links trunk muscles to the posterior neck and shoulder skeleton.
  • Skeleton identified as neural crest-derived is affected in human Klippel-Feil syndrome, Sprengel's deformity and Arnold-Chiari I/II malformation.

Skin Melanocytes

Melanoblast migration.png Mouse-melanoblast migration icon.jpg
Mouse melanocyte migration[10] Movie Mouse Skin - Melanoblast Migration E14.5[11]

Quicktime | Flash

References

  1. <pubmed>21552538</pubmed>
  2. <pubmed>20478300</pubmed>
  3. <pubmed>20399765</pubmed>
  4. <pubmed>20360764</pubmed>
  5. <pubmed>10683170</pubmed>
  6. <pubmed>17848161</pubmed>| PMC2375817 | J Anat.
  7. <pubmed>20962585</pubmed>
  8. Bryan R. Kuo, Carol A. Erickson Vagal neural crest cell migratory behavior: A transition between the cranial and trunk crest. Volume 240, Issue 9, pages 2084–2100, September 2011 Dev Dynamics
  9. <pubmed>16034409</pubmed>| PMC1352163| Nature
  10. <pubmed>16277556</pubmed>| PLoS Biol.
  11. <pubmed>20067551</pubmed>| PMC2859249


Reviews

<pubmed>21309066</pubmed> <pubmed>21309065</pubmed> <pubmed>21295685</pubmed> <pubmed>21452438</pubmed>

Articles

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Cite this page: Hill, M.A. (2024, March 28) Embryology Neural Crest Development. Retrieved from https://embryology.med.unsw.edu.au/embryology/index.php/Neural_Crest_Development

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© Dr Mark Hill 2024, UNSW Embryology ISBN: 978 0 7334 2609 4 - UNSW CRICOS Provider Code No. 00098G