Lewis wolpert Study guides, Class notes & Summaries

- Understand how the neural crest contributes to cardiac development and the pathology underlying congenital cardiac abnormalities. - Explain how certain SNPs might contribute to congenital abnormalities. - Discuss the evidence that Notch signalling is important during cardiac morphogenesis

- To describe the changes in DNA methylation that occur upon fertilization and during early mammalian development and some of the mechanisms involved - To understand that TET proteins are involved in active demethylation - To provide an example of how the epigenome can change post-embryonic development - To have been reminded of the method of Chromatin Immunoprecipitation and introduced to Bisulfite Sequencing

- To have gained an understanding of why epigenetics is relevant to development - To understand that DNA methylation can impact gene expression and be able to describe an experimental approach to test this - To explain how patterns of DNA methylation can be maintained through DNA replication - To understand that covalent histone modifications form a code that can impact gene expression - To explain how some histone modifications can be maintained through DNA replication

- Provide an overview of the polycomb and trithorax group complexes and their activities - Describe evidence that indicates stem cell chromatin is in an open ‘permissive’ state - Understand what is bivalent chromatin and why it may be important for stem cell biology and development - Understand the steps of chromatin immunoprecipitation and why it is a useful technique in epigenetic studies - Describe the Nodal signalling example and experimental approach, and understand how it illustrates ...

- Describe experiments that defined compartments of cell lineage restriction. - Define a compartment and describe the evidence showing that the parasegment is a compartment and the developmentally important unit of the fly. - Describe genetic experiments demonstrating that HOM-C genes regulate parasegment identity in Drosophila. - Evaluate whether the vertebrate Hox genes share a conserved function with Drosophila HomC genes

- Discuss the evidence for the nodal morphogen acting during mesoderm induction. - Discuss the concept of the vertebrate dorsal organiser. - Discuss the evidence that the brachyury transcription factor is a conserved regulator of germ layer specification. - Draw conclusions regarding the molecular pathways regulating development of Urbilateria.

- To give an overview of genomic imprinting, when it is initiated and how imprinting disorders can arise - Describe key events in X-inactivation including the role of the Xist non-coding RNA

-Describe the hierarchy of gene activity that regulates Drosophila segmentation -Distinguish and explain methods used to investigate protein vs mRNA expression -Describe the syncytial nature of the early stages of fly development and understand its significance. -Understand and describe at the molecular level how the Gap genes regulate the expression of Eve stripe 2 -Make predictions about segment polarity gene expression in a pair-rule mutant embryo or about pair-rule gene expression in a Gap m...

- Describe the different types of animal body symmetry and the main body axes of bilaterally symmetrical animals. - Describe the features that define diploblasts versus triploblasts. - Describe the features that define protostomes versus deuterostomes. - Understand the importance of the Ediacaran and Cambrian fauna in animal evolution. - Describe the common features of phylotypic stage chordate embryos. - Discuss the evidence indicating that Pax6 is a conserved regulator of eye development. - ...

- Explain the significance of the neural crest lineage to vertebrate anatomy. - Distinguish the ventral-lateral and dorsal pathways of neural crest migration. - Give examples of cell types derived from specific AP regions of neural crest. - Describe and interpret experiments used to ‘fate map’ neural crest cells in avian embryos. - Describe and interpret experiments used to determine the developmental potential of neural crest cells in avian embryos.