Effects of Folic Acid and Homocysteine on the Morphogenesis of Mouse Cephalic Neural Crest Cells In Vitro

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• 作者：Fernanda Rosene Melo ; Raul Bardini Bressan…
• 关键词：Neural crest ; Neurocristopathy ; Hyperhomocysteinemia ; Folate deficiency ; Smooth muscle
• 刊名：Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology
• 出版年：2017
• 出版时间：March 2017
• 年：2017
• 卷：37
• 期：2
• 页码：371-376
• 全文大小：
• 刊物类别：Biomedical and Life Sciences
• 刊物主题：Neurosciences; Cell Biology; Neurobiology;
• 出版者：Springer US
• ISSN：1573-6830
• 卷排序：37

文摘

Folate deficiency and hyperhomocysteinemia have long been associated with developmental anomalies, particularly neural tube defects and neurocristopathies—a group of diverse disorders that result from defective growth, differentiation, and migration of neural crest (NC) cells. However, the exact mechanisms by which homocysteine (Hcys) and/or folate deficiencies disrupt NC development are still poorly understood in mammals. In this work, we employed a well-defined culture system to investigate the effects of Hcys and folic acid (FA) supplementation on the morphogenetic processes of murine NC cells in vitro. We demonstrated that Hcys increases outgrowth and proliferation of cephalic NC cells and impairs their differentiation into smooth muscle cells. In addition, we showed that FA alone does not directly affect the developmental dynamics of the cephalic NC cells but is able to prevent the Hcys-induced effects. Our results, therefore, suggest that elevated Hcys levels per se cause dysmorphogenesis of the cephalic NC and might contribute to neurocristopathies in mammalian embryos.