The cerebral cortex is the evolutionary most recent part of the brain and allows higher
cognitive functions, which rely on a tremendous diversity of neuron types organized into …

Work in Xenopus laevis produced the first molecular explanation for neural specification, the
default model, where inactivation of the BMP pathway in ectodermal cells changes fates …

The central nervous system (CNS) of Xenopus is derived from three of four tiers of
blastomeres of the 32-cell embryo, and each blastomere in these tiers produces a …

Neural induction is the instructive interaction whereby signals emitted from the organizer
direct cells in the ectoderm to a neural fate and thereby to form the neural plate. Recent work …

In vertebrates, BMP signaling before gastrulation suppresses neural development. Later in
development, BMP signaling specifies a dorsal and ventral fate in the forebrain and dorsal …

Cell fate specification, a central problem in developmental biology, presents an intriguing
challenge in the studies of neural development. How are certain cells in the embryonic …

During embryonic development, the inductive molecules produced by local origins normally
arrive at their target tissues in a nondirectional, diffusion manner. The target organ precursor …

Although the spatial and temporal orchestration of early vertebrate embryogenesis is
missing from cell culture systems, recent work suggests that many of the same signals …

Neural induction is the process by which embryonic cells in the ectoderm make a decision to
acquire a neural fate (to form the neural plate) rather than give rise to other structures such …

The entire nervous system of the vertebrate embryo is derived from an epithelium sheet
called the neural plate, which is induced by the organizer/node at the onset of gastrulation …