Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2014
College/Unit
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department/Program/Center
Biology
Abstract
Background
Alcohol is detrimental to early development. Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD) due to maternal alcohol abuse results in a series of developmental abnormalities including cranial facial dysmorphology, ocular anomalies, congenital heart defects, microcephaly and intellectual disabilities. Previous studies have been shown that ethanol exposure causes neural crest (NC) apoptosis and perturbation of neural crest migration. However, the underlying mechanism remains elusive. In this report we investigated the fetal effect of alcohol on the process of neural crest development in the Xenopus leavis.
Results
Pre-gastrulation exposure of 2-4% alcohol induces apoptosis in Xenopus embryo whereas 1% alcohol specifically impairs neural crest migration without observing discernible apoptosis. Additionally, 1% alcohol treatment considerably increased the phenotype of small head (43.4%± 4.4%, total embryo n = 234), and 1.5% and 2.0% dramatically augment the deformation to 81.2% ± 6.5% (n = 205) and 91.6% ±3.0% (n = 235), respectively (P < 0.05). Significant accumulation of Homocysteine was caused by alcohol treatment in embryos and 5-mehtyltetrahydrofolate restores neural crest migration and alleviates homocysteine accumulation, resulting in inhibition of the alcohol-induced neurocristopathies.
Conclusions
Our study demonstrates that prenatal alcohol exposure causes neural crest cell migration abnormality and 5-mehtyltetrahydrofolate could be beneficial for treating FASD.
Digital Commons Citation
Shi, Yu; Li, Jiejing; Chen, Chunjiang; Gong, Manzi; Chen, Yuan; Liu, Youxue; Chen, Jie; Li, Tingyu; and Song, Weihong, "5-mehtyltetrahydrofolate rescues alcohol-induced neural crest cell migration abnormalities" (2014). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 2478.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/2478
Source Citation
Shi, Y., Li, J., Chen, C. et al. 5-mehtyltetrahydrofolate rescues alcohol-induced neural crest cell migration abnormalities. Mol Brain 7, 67 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13041-014-0067-9
Comments
© 2014 Shi et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.