Role of non-canonical Wnt pathway during cellular organization and diferentiation in spinal neural plate development

Resumen del póster presentado al 11th Meeting of the Spanish Society for Developmental Biology, celebrado en Girona (España) del 19 al 21 de octubre de 2016.-- et al.
Neural tube closure is a complex developmental process that takes place early during embryogenesis and is a key step in neurulation. It has become evident that some posterior neural tissue is generated independently of the mechanism that induces the anterior neural plate. This spinal neural tissue derived from a bipotent neuromesodermal progenitors located in the caudal lateral epiblast. Neurulation is regulated to a great extent by the non-canonical Wnt signalling pathway, which in turns regulates actin cytoskeleton responsible for cell shape during development, directs polarised cellular orientation within the plane and directional cell migration. There is an increasing evidence for the non-canonical Wnt signalling pathway to be involved in the final step in neurulation, the closure of the posterior neuropore. Vangl+/ lp embryos presented disruption of the apical accumulation of actin microfilaments, an abnormal cell morphology and alteration in the expression of genes related with the neuromesodermal progenitor determination. Our findings demonstrated that defects in the PCP-Wnt pathway disrupt the dynamic regulation of the neuromesodermal progenitors in the posterior embryo, alterations that are directly implicated in the failure of spinal neural tube closure.