BACKGROUND Traditionally, restoration of extensive palatomaxillary defects have been achieved by prosthetic restoration, often with suboptimal functional results. More recently, vascularized bone-containing free flaps have been used for this purpose. OBJECTIVE To describe 6 patients who underwent palatomaxillary reconstruction using the composite iliac crest-internal oblique osteomusculocutan...

Perlecan is a heparan-sulfate proteoglycan abundantly expressed in pericellular matrices and basement membranes during development. Inactivation of the perlecan gene in mice is lethal at two developmental stages: around E10 and around birth. We report a high incidence of malformations of the cardiac outflow tract in perlecan-deficient embryos. Complete transposition of great arteries was diagno...

The transcription factor Sox10 is required for proper development of various neural crest-derived cell types. Several lineages including melanocytes, autonomic and enteric neurons, and all subtypes of peripheral glia are missing in mice homozygous for Sox10 mutations. Moreover, haploinsufficiency of Sox10 results in neural crest defects that cause Waardenburg/Hirschsprung disease in humans. We ...

The vertebrate neural crest is a pluripotent cell population that generates a large variety of cell types, including peripheral neurons, cartilage and pigment cells. Mechanisms that control the patterning of the neural crest toward specific cell fates remain only partially understood. Zebrafish homozygous for the sympathetic mutation 1 (sym1) have defects in a subset of neural crest derivatives...

The distribution of the extracellular matrix (ECM) glycoprotein, tenascin, has been compared with that of fibronectin in neural crest migration pathways of Xenopus laevis, quail and rat embryos. In all species studied, the distribution of tenascin, examined by immunohistochemistry, was more closely correlated with pathways of migration than that of fibronectin, which is known to be important fo...

The neural crest is a multipotent, migratory cell population that contributes to a variety of tissues and organs during vertebrate embryogenesis. Here, we focus on the function of Msx1 and Msx2, homeobox genes implicated in several disorders affecting craniofacial development in humans. We show that Msx1/2 mutants exhibit profound deficiencies in the development of structures derived from the c...

Neural crest precursors express genes that cause them to become migratory, multipotent cells, distinguishing them from adjacent stationary neural progenitors in the neurepithelium. Histone methylation spatiotemporally regulates neural crest gene expression; however, the protein methyltransferases active in neural crest precursors are unknown. Moreover, the regulation of methylation during the d...

Neural crest cells migrate extensively and give rise to diverse cell types, including cells of the sensory and autonomic nervous systems. A major unanswered question concerning the neural crest is when and how the neural crest cells become determined to adopt a particular fate. We have explored the developmental potential of trunk neural crest cells in avian embryos by microinjecting a vital dy...

A complete humerus referred to Agriotherium is described, collected from early-late Hemphillian deposits Zacatecas. widely represented by isolated molars, mandibles, and maxillae in faunas of Eurasia North America. In the literature, postcranial elements are scarce briefly described with little detail. The greatest diversity known Langebaanweg quarry South Africa; however, only specimen Mexico....

In vertebrate embryos, neural crest cells migrate only through the anterior half of each somite while avoiding the posterior half. We demonstrate that neural crest cells express the receptor neuropilin 2 (Npn2), while its repulsive ligand semaphorin 3F (Sema3f) is restricted to the posterior-half somite. In Npn2 and Sema3f mutant mice, neural crest cells lose their segmental migration pattern a...