Abstract Recent years have seen a renaissance of investigation into the mechanisms of
inner ear development. Genetic analysis of zebrafish has contributed significantly to this …

Members of the fibroblast growth factor (FGF) family of peptide ligands have been implicated
in otic placode induction in several vertebrate species. Here, we have functionally analyzed …

Hair cells of the inner ear develop from an equivalence group marked by expression of the
proneural gene Atoh1. In mouse, Atoh1 is necessary for hair cell differentiation, but its role in …

We have been studying the consequences of embryonic vestibular dysfunction caused by
the monolith (mnl) mutation in zebrafish. mnl is a dominant mutation that specifically inhibits …

Preplacodal ectoderm arises near the end of gastrulation as a narrow band of cells surrounding
the anterior neural plate. This domain later resolves into discrete cranial placodes that, …

The zebrafish (Danio rerio) is a useful model system for analyzing development of the inner
ear. A number of mutations affecting the inner ear have been identified. Here we investigate …

Sox2 has been variously implicated in maintenance of pluripotent stem cells or, alternatively,
early stages of cell differentiation, depending on context. In the developing inner ear, Sox2 …

Recent studies of inner ear development suggest that hair cells and support cells arise
within a common equivalence group by cell-cell interactions mediated by Delta and Notch …

The zebrafish muscle segment homeobox genes msxB, msxC and msxE are expressed in
partially overlapping domains in the neural crest and preplacodal ectoderm. We examined the …

The vertebrate inner ear is a marvel of structural and functional complexity, which is all the
more remarkable because it develops from such a simple structure, the otic placode. Analysis …