Methods in Molecular Biology Series, The Epithelial-to Mesenchymal Transition.
Zain Alhashem, Macarena Alvarez-Garcillan Portillo, Ravinand Htun, Anton Gauert, Luis Briones Montecinos, Steffen Härtel, Claudia Linke
ABSTRACT
The study of cell migration has been greatly enhanced by the development of new model systems and analysis protocols to study this process in vivo. Zebrafish embryos have been a principal protagonist because they are easily accessible, genetically tractable, and optically transparent. Neural crest cells, on the other hand, are the ideal system to study cell migration. These cells migrate extensively, using different modalities of movement and sharing many traits with metastatic cancer cells. In this chapter, we present new tools and protocols that allow the study of NC development and migration in vivo.