Melanocytes are melanin-producing cells found in skin, hair follicles, eyes, inner ear, bones,
heart and brain of humans. They arise from pluripotent neural crest cells and differentiate in …

Fish coloration, evolved from selection and adaptation, is a prominent feature of remarkable
aquaculture merits. Fish possess more pigment cell types than any other vertebrates and are …

The ability to define cell types and how they change during organogenesis is central to our
understanding of animal development and human disease. Despite the crucial nature of this …

Charles Darwin, while trying to devise a general theory of heredity from the observations of
animal and plant breeders, discovered that domesticated mammals possess a distinctive …

The vertebrate body plan and organs are shaped during a conserved embryonic phase
called the phylotypic stage. However, the mechanisms that guide the epigenome through …

Intestinal development in amniotes is driven by interactions between progenitor cells
derived from the three primary germ layers. Genetic analyses and gene targeting …

The enteric nervous system (ENS) has been explored by developmental neurobiologists
and medical researchers for decades. Whereas developmental biologists have been …

Neural crest cells are highly multipotent stem cells, but it remains unclear how their fate
restriction to specific fates occurs. The direct fate restriction model hypothesises that …

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is now the pre-eminent vertebrate model system for clarification
of the roles of specific genes and signaling pathways in development. The zebrafish …

The neural crest is a transient migratory population of stem cells derived from the dorsal
neural folds at the border between neural and non-neural ectoderm. Following induction …