These physiologic roles are strongly tied to embryonic morphogenetic events, including those that occur in the neural crest and heart (Strilic et al. 2010).
A VSMC fate map of the aorta and its main branches revealed that VSMCs originating from different sources (neural crest, secondary heart field, somites, mesangioblasts, proepicardium, splanchnic mesoderm, mesothelium) reside in distinct segments (Majesky, 2007).
On the other hand, the 5q translocation breakpoint disrupts the 3′ UTR of MATR3, which encodes the nuclear matrix protein Matrin 3, and mouse Matr3 is strongly expressed in neural crest, developing heart and great vessels, whereas Ahdc1 is not.
We, therefore, hypothesize that the vascular remodeling observed in WAF-treated embryos is an indirect effect caused by reduced circulation in the intersegmental blood vessels due to a primary disruption in early neural crest-mediated heart development and function.
Functionally it is implicated in SOX10-mediated neural crest and early heart development (Prasad et al, 2011).
EMT is a highly conserved cellular program known to play a role in processes such as mesoderm formation, neural crest development and heart valve development.
EMT is widely utilized by the embryo for gastrulation, neural crest cell formation, heart valve formation and other developmental processes (Hay, 1995; Yang and Weinberg, 2008).
Membranous ventricular septum defects can be caused by reduced contribution of the cardiac neural crest or second heart field to the outflow tract, resulting in aberrant alignment of the outflow tract vessels, or defects in endothelial-to-mesenchymal transformation and maturation of the cardiac cushions.
Drosophila has only one cardiac cell type, no neural crest cells, and a heart with no atrial or ventricular chamber morphology (Kirby 1999).
The present study demonstrates that maternal diabetes alters the expression of some genes that are involved in the development of the cardiac neural crest, leading to congenital heart defects.
