Bioinformatic Analysis of Nematode Migration-Associated Genes Identifies Novel Vertebrate Neural Crest Markers
Abstract
Neural crest cells are highly motile, yet a limited number of genes governing neural crest migration have been identified by conventional studies. To test the hypothesis that cell migration genes are likely to be conserved over large evolutionary distances and from diverse tissues, we searched for vertebrate homologs of genes important for migration of various cell types in the invertebrate nematode and examined their expression during vertebrate neural crest cell migration. Our systematic analysis utilized a combination of comparative genomic scanning, functional pathway analysis and gene expression profiling to uncover previously unidentified genes expressed by premigratory, emigrating and/or migrating neural crest cells. The results demonstrate that similar gene sets are expressed in migratory cell types across distant animals and different germ layers. Bioinformatics analysis of these factors revealed relationships between these genes within signaling pathways that may be important during neural crest cell migration.
Additional Information
© 2014 Kwon et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Received: January 18, 2014; Accepted: June 26, 2014; Published: July 22, 2014. Funding: This work was supported by the Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) (2011-0021845 to YK), by a 2013 Research Grant from Kangwon National University to YK, by Korea Basic Science Institute grant (T32611 to SK) and by HD037105 to MEB. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Acknowledgments: We thank Dr. Kye-Young Kim (NIH) for help with pathway analysis. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. Author Contributions: Conceived and designed the experiments: YK BJH. Performed the experiments: S-HK OKP SN JK BJH YK. Analyzed the data: S-HK OKP SN JK BJH YK. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: YK MEB BJH. Wrote the paper: YK MEB BJH.Attached Files
Published - journal.pone.0103024.pdf
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Additional details
- PMCID
- PMC4106859
- Eprint ID
- 49012
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140828-084522656
- 2011-0021845
- National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF)
- Kangwon National University
- T32611
- Korea Basic Science Institute
- HD037105
- NIH
- Created
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2014-08-28Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field