Int. J. Dev. Biol. 50: 3 - 15 (2006)

https://doi.org/10.1387/ijdb.052095cs

Vol 50, Issue 1

Head-tail patterning of the vertebrate embryo: one, two or many unresolved problems?

Open Access | Special Contribution | Published: 1 December 2005

Claudio D. Stern^1,*, Jeroen Charité², Jacqueline Deschamps³, Denis Duboule⁴, Anthony J. Durston³, Marie Kmita⁴, Jean-François Nicolas⁵, Isabel Palmeirim⁶, Jim C. Smith⁷ and Lewis Wolpert¹

European Union Network of Excellence "Cells into Organs". ¹Department of Anatomy & Developmental Biology, University College London, U.K., ²Department of Cell Biology and Genetics, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, ³Hubrecht Laboratory / NIOB, Utrecht, The Netherlands, ⁴Département de Biologie Animale, Université de Genève, Switzerland, ⁵Unité de Biologie Moléculaire du Développement, Institut Pasteur, Paris, France, ⁶Escola de Ciências da Saúde/Instituto de Investigação em Ciências da Vida e Saúde, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal and ⁷Wellcome/CR-UK Gurdon Institute for Cancer and Developmental Biology, Cambridge, U.K.

Abstract

When, where and how is the head-tail axis of the embryo set up during development? These are such fundamental and intensely studied questions that one might expect them to have been answered long ago. Not so; we still understand very little about the cellular or molecular mechanisms that lead to the orderly arrangement of body elements along the head-tail axis in vertebrates. In this paper, we outline some of the major outstanding problems and controversies and try to identify some reasons why it has been so difficult to resolve this important issue.

Keywords

antero-posterior axis, AVE, hypoblast, hox gene, homeobox gene, Spemann Organizer