Genome complexity in embryology: neural crest cells (Introduction)

by David Turell , Wednesday, May 06, 2015, 03:19 (3490 days ago) @ David Turell

More and more complexity. Pluripotential neural crest cells:-http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150430145125.htm-"'Neural crest cells never had their potential restricted at all," LaBonne said. "We believe a small population of early stem cells were set aside, so that when the time came, their immense developmental potential could be unleashed to create new features characteristic of vertebrates."-"Acquisition of neural crest cells more than 500 million years ago led vertebrates to evolve and leave behind less complex life forms (simple aquatic filter feeders, much like today's sea squirts and lancelets). With these cells, animals developed important new features such as a skull to house a complex brain, jaws for predation, a complex peripheral nervous system and many other cell types essential to the vertebrate body.-"In early blastula embryos, pluripotent cells were thought to exist only transiently; as an embryo develops, cells become restricted into categories of cells called germ layers and then into specialized cell types. The Northwestern study suggests that not all cells get restricted at those early stages. Instead, neural crest cells may have evolved as a consequence of a subset of blastula cells retaining activity of the regulatory network underlying pluripotency.-" The study underscores just how much remains to be discovered about embryonic development. The human body has more than 10 trillion cells elaborately organized into tissues and organs that are intricate and highly complex, yet it all is self-assembled from a single cell, the fertilized egg."