A protein that is necessary for the formation of the vertebrate brain has been identified by researchers at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) and Boston Children's Hospital, in collaboration with scientists from Oxford and Rio de Janeiro.
The researchers say the finding, which has been successfully demonstrated in frog embryos, will help scientists control differentiation of various cell types.
Their study was given early online Thursday and is being published in print in the March 23 issue of the journal Developmental Cell. Xinjun Zhang and Seong-Moon Cheong, both postdoctoral fellows in the laboratory of HSCI-affiliated faculty member Xi He at Boston Children's Hospital, are co-first authors.
The protein, Notum, first discovered in fruit flies in 2002 and then found in mice and humans, is one of many that help determine embryonic development. For some time, researchers have known that Notum regulates wing formation in flies. But until recently, it was not known how Notum affected vertebrate embryo development. In collaboration with researchers from University of Oxford and Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, He and colleagues compared how frog embryos - which are considered models for human embryos - developed with and without Notum.
When the researchers injected frog embryos with Notum, the embryos grew bigger brains and heads. When Notum was not present, the embryos would become a sack of skin cells with no head and a tiny brain, a result of embryonic progenitor cells making only epidermal but not neural cells.
(...)