MCDB 423 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Pax6, Pax2, Gastrulation

• School: U of M
• Department: Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
• Course: MCDB 423
• Professor: John Kuwada

Document Summary

We saw that the notochord and fp secrete shh and induce ventral fate and inhibit dorsal fate. So one possibility for dorsal fate is that shh alone can control the dorsal ventral pattern in the spinal cord and the dorsal fate is the default fate. A second possibility is that the dorsal fate might be induced by dorsal signals. When you ablate the notochord, the crabp which is a transcriptional factor made by commissural neurons, the crabp is expressed throughout the ventral spinal cord. However, instead of looking at a marker, you examine the cells because the presence of crabp suggests that the new cells now are commissural neurons. When you do the assay, you find that these are not commissural neurons despite the fact that. This tells you that the dorsal fate are not the default fates. So the alternative possibility is that the dorsal fate must be induced by another factor.