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HEREDITAS ›› 2013, Vol. 35 ›› Issue (4): 441-448.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1005.2013.00441

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Zebrafishcellmovements during gastrulation

ZHANG Ting, MO Xian-Ming   

  1. Laboratory of Stem Cell Biology, State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610041, China
  • Received:2012-12-18 Revised:2012-12-31 Online:2013-04-20 Published:2013-04-25

Abstract: During zebrafish gastrulation, large cellular rearrangements create the formation of the three germ layers, ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm. This process includes three types of conserved morphogenetic movement: epiboly, involution, and convergent extension. Specially, the anterior movement of prechordal plate progenitors is essential for the location and differentiation of mesendoderm progenitors, and the pechordal plate progenitors’coherent migration is thought to be a good model to study the mechanism of cell movement in vivo. Gastrulation migration is known to be controlled by many signaling pathways such as Wnt/planar cell polaritysignaling; however, the underlying molecular mechanism for cellular behavior remains unknown. At present, it is generally agree that cell adhesion and cytoskeletal rearrangement are critical factors during zebrafish gastrulation cell migration. In addition, the role of extraembryonic tissue (yolk syncytial layer) during gastrulation is concerned increasingly. Here, we described the essential factors for controlling cellular behaviors and highlighted the major issues and questions that requirefurther investigation during zebrafishgastrular cell migration in order to provide a complete map containing all the factors for regulating gastrulation cell migration and their interactions on a cellular level.

Key words: three germ layers, epiboly, internalization, convergence and extension, anterior movement, cell adhe-sion, cytoskeletal rearrangement