Document Type

Article

Original Publication Date

2016

Journal/Book/Conference Title

PLoS ONE

Volume

11

Issue

10

DOI of Original Publication

10.1371/journal.pone.0164433

Comments

Originally published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0164433

Funded in part by the VCU Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund.

Date of Submission

February 2017

Abstract

Collective migration depends on cell-cell interactions between neighbors that contribute to their overall directionality, yet the mechanisms that control the coordinated migration of neurons remains to be elucidated. During hindbrain development, facial branchiomotor neurons (FBMNs) undergo a stereotypic tangential caudal migration from their place of birth in rhombomere (r)4 to their final location in r6/7. FBMNs engage in collective cell migration that depends on neuron-to-neuron interactions to facilitate caudal directionality. Here, we demonstrate that Cadherin-2-mediated neuron-to-neuron adhesion is necessary for directional and collective migration of FBMNs. We generated stable transgenic zebrafish expressing dominant-negative Cadherin-2 (Cdh2ΔEC) driven by the islet1 promoter. Cell-autonomous inactivation of Cadherin-2 function led to non-directional migration of FBMNs and a defect in caudal tangential migration. Additionally, mosaic analysis revealed that Cdh2ΔEC-expressing FBMNs are not influenced to migrate caudally by neighboring wild-type FBMNs due to a defect in collective cell migration. Taken together, our data suggest that Cadherin-2 plays an essential cell-autonomous role in mediating the collective migration of FBMNs.

Rights

© 2016 Rebman et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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