Myc interacting zinc finger protein-1 (Miz1) is a transcription factor known to regulate cell cycle- and cell adhesion-related genes in cancer. Here we show that Miz1 also plays a critical role in neural crest development. In the chick, Miz1 is expressed throughout the neural plate and closing neural tube. Its morpholino-mediated knockdown affects neural crest precursor survival, leading to red...

During gastrulation in Xenopus convergence and extension movements, mediated by mediolateral intercalations, are the driving force for early neural plate morphogenesis. Here we show that the winged helix transcriptional regulator, Xfd-12' is dynamically expressed in medial neural plate precursors that undergo convergence and extension movements. These medial neuraxial progenitors are specified ...

Automatic license plate recognition system is an image processing technology used to identify vehicles by their license plates. Such systems require the recognition of characters from the plate image. Artificial neural networks are commonly used to perform character recognition due to their high noise tolerance. Feed-Forward Neural Network (FFNN) can be used to recognize the characters from ima...

This paper deals with problematic from field of artificial intelligence, machine vision and neural networks in construction of an automatic number plate recognition system (ANPR). This paper includes brief introduction of automatic number plate recognition, which ensure a process of number plate detection, processes of proper characters segmentation, normalization and recognition. Automatic Num...

Remodeling of epithelial sheets plays important roles in animal morphogenesis. Shroom3 is known to regulate the apical constriction of epithelial cells. Here, we show that Shroom3 binds ROCKs and recruits them to the epithelial apical junctions. We identified the Shroom3-binding site (RII-C1) on ROCKs, and found that RII-C1 could antagonize the Shroom3-ROCK interaction, interfering with the act...

Among the families of transcription factors expressed at the neural plate border, Sox proteins have been shown to regulate multiple aspects of neural crest development. Sox8, Sox9 and Sox10, exhibit overlapping expression domains in neural crest progenitors, and studies in mouse suggest that Sox8 functions redundantly with Sox9 and Sox10 during neural crest development. Here, we show that in Xe...

Neural crest cells form at the border between the neural plate and the epidermis. The tissue interactions that underlie neural crest cell induction have been investigated primarily by heterotopic grafting experiments in vivo and by conjugating different tissues in vitro. Three models have been proposed to explain the induction of neural crest cells at the neural plate border, i.e. (1) the influ...

We have developed an in vitro model of the isolated chicken neural plate. Here we demonstrate that even in the absence of notochord, the neural plate rapidly develops a typical dorsoventral patterning. This observation suggests that the ventral cell types are specified or at least predetermined prior to notochord formation and that permissive conditions are sufficient for differentiation of ven...

Neurulation is the process by which progenitors of the central nervous system are shaped, separated from and brought beneath the epidermis. The cellular basis of these movements have been investigated in amphibians (Jacobson, 1981; Jacobson and Gordon, 1976; Keller et al., 1992b), chicken (Schoenwolf and Smith, 1990b; Smith and Schoenwolf, 1997) and mice (Bush et al., 1990; Sausedo and Schoenwo...