McNair Scholar 2019 Amina Hussein

Research project

Defining the Spatiotemporal Expression of Contactin-3 and Dispatched-3 in Chick Embryos

Abstract: Neural crest cells are embryonic cells that migrate from the developing nervous system and form multiple structures such as neurons, craniofacial bone, and smooth muscle. Previous research identified CNTN3 and DISP3 as putative regulators of neural crest development. CNTN3 and DISP3 regulate neuronal cell adhesion and cell differentiation, respectively, which are both processes relevant to neural crest development. Our first step towards defining CNTN3 and DISP3 function in the neural crest is to use whole mount in situ hybridization to visualize the spatiotemporal expression of CNTN3 and DISP3 mRNA in chick embryos. We found that both CNTN3 and DISP3 are expressed in the cranial neural folds. In addition, CNTN3 is expressed in the otic placodes and somites, while DISP3 is expressed in the spinal neural plate. Because neural folds give rise to the neural crest, these expression profiles suggest that CNTN3 and DISP3 may play a role in neural crest development.

Faculty mentor

Dr. Laura Gammill is an Associate Professor of Genetics, Cell Biology, and Development at the University of Minnesota. Dr. Gammill received her Ph.D. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology studying developmental neurobiology. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of neural crest formation and migration, particularly how post-translational events affect neural crest development. Dr. Gammill is thrilled to be a McNair faculty mentor for the first time, as she finds training students to be one of the greatest privileges of her position.