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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2011 May 1.
Published in final edited form as: Dev Biol. 2010 Feb 6;341(1):291–304. doi: 10.1016/j.ydbio.2010.02.001

Fig 3. Conditional Deletion of Hand2 effects cell-cell interactions and migration of cardiac neural crest-derived cells.

Fig 3

Migrating neural crest-derived cells were visualized in E10.5 Hand2wt/wt;Wnt1-cre/R26RYFP reporter [A–B] and Hand2fl/del;Wnt1-cre/R26RYFP mutant reporter hearts [C–D] immunostained for YFP expression in whole-mount. Confocal optical sections (1μm) were compressed into a z-stack (~400 sections) and analyzed. The pattern of migrating neural crest-derived cells observed within the outflow tract of mutant embryos was strikingly affected by loss of Hand2 expression. Neural crest-derived cells failed to migrate as a sheet and individual cells appear to have lost apparent contact with their neighbors routinely observed in control migrating cells (compare panels B and D). The number of neural crest-derived cells localized within the conotruncus (white arrows) appears reduced (see Figure 4) and the patterning of the AP Prongs is defective in the mutant compared to control hearts. The insets show high power views of the area indicated by the (*).