Principles of Development notes

- 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 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. - ...

- Identify the important signalling centres in the developing limb bud and describe the experiments that identified these centres and demonstrated their importance. - Describe the experimental evidence for the role of FGF signalling in limb bud outgrowth - Describe the experimental evidence that shows that Shh acts as a morphogen to pattern the anterior-posterior axis of the limb bud. - Describe how the important signalling centres in the limb bud co-ordinately regulate pattern formation in the ...

-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...

- Discuss the evidence supporting a role for tinman homologues in heart development - Discuss the anatomical and molecular evidence supporting the theory of dorsoventral axis inversion during the evolution of protostome and deuterostome lineages. - Describe the conserved features of Hox gene cluster organisation. - Appreciate and discuss how changes in the expression and activity of Hox genes have contributed to changes in anatomy during animal evolution. - Draw conclusions regarding the molecul...

- Describe the experimental evidence supporting a conserved pathway for regulating neurogenesis in animals - Discuss the conserved function of proneural genes in neurogenesis - Discuss the conserved function of neurogenic genes in neurogenesis - Describe the role of lateral inhibition in selecting neural precursors - Describe the conserved role of notch-delta signalling in mediating lateral inhibition - Appreciate and discuss the distinct processes of neural induction, neurogenesis and neurulati...

- Appreciate and describe the molecular mechanisms underlying neural induction - Describe TGF-beta (TGF-β) signal transduction and the differences between the BMP versus nodal pathways - Discuss the experiments that demonstrate a role for BMP antagonists in vertebrate neural induction - Describe how antisense morpholino oligos can be used to inhibit gene function - Appreciate and describe the differences between the processes of neural induction versus neurogenesis