This action funds an NSF/Sloan Fondation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Molecular Evolution for 1995 for two years. The training and research plan will be conducted at the University of Oregol under the sponsorship of Dr. Charles B. Kimmel of the Institute of Neuroscience. The reseach will focus on the origin and evolution of a critical shared-derived feature of the vertebrate body plan, the neural crest. Genetic investigations of vertebrate embryogenesis have identified the snail and goosecoid genes as molecular markers for the initial specification of neural crest, as well as its most important derivatives in the craniofacial region, the pharyngeal arches. The primary objective of this research will be to clone the homologs of these genes from a nonvertebrate chordate (Amphioxus, subphylum Cephalochordata), as well as a primitive vertebrate (the lamprey, superclass Agnatha), and to compare their embryonic expression patterns with a model vertebrate system, the zebrafish.
