Craniofacial malformations are involved in three fourths of all congenital birth defects in
humans, affecting the development of head, face, or neck. Tremendous progress in the study …

The molecular mechanisms of epithelial-mesenchymal transformation (EMT) have long
been studied to gain a greater understanding of this distinct change in cellular morphology …

Wnt signaling has recently emerged as a key factor in controlling stem cell expansion. In
contrast, we show here that Wnt/β-catenin signal activation in emigrating neural crest stem …

The neural crest is a multipotent population of migratory cells unique to the vertebrate
embryo. Neural crest arises at the lateral edge of the neural plate and migrates throughout …

β-Catenin plays a pivotal role in cadherin-mediated cell adhesion. Moreover, it is a
downstream signaling component of Wnt that controls multiple developmental processes …

The transcription factor Microphthalmia-associated transcription factor (MITF) is a lineage-
determination factor, which modulates melanocyte differentiation and pigmentation. MITF …

Migration of neural crest cells is an elaborate process that requires the delamination of cells
from an epithelium and cell movement into an extracellular matrix. In this work, it is shown for …

A fundamental set of patterning genes may define the global organization of the craniofacial
region. One of our goals has been to identify these basic patterning genes and understand …

In the past several years, we postulated that the loss of Wnt signaling was implicated in the
pathology of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Since then, our lab and other groups have confirmed …

Malignant melanoma cells are known to have altered expression of growth factors compared
with normal human melanocytes. These changes probably favor tumor growth and …