Fig. 7. Assessing the retention of pluripotency during neural crest development.
(A) Contrasting models of neural crest development. Model 1: neural crest emerges from an intermediate population that retains blastula pluripotency (29). Model 2: neural crest emerges from ectoderm and reactivates pluripotency. (B) Ancestors inferred from scRNA-seq support model 2, where neural crest derives from neural cells at the neural plate border. (C) Single-cell visualization (SPRING) of neuroectoderm, non-neural ectoderm, and neural crest also indicates that neural crest derives from the neural plate border. (D) Neural crest differentiation involves hundreds of >3- fold dynamic marker genes. (E) At stage 11, the shared pluripotency circuit proposed by Buitrago-Delgado et al. (30) - foxd3, c-myc (myca), id3, tfap2a, ventx2.1, ets1, and snail and pou3f5.2 - is expressed broadly in nonpluripotent cells. Score shows normalized aggregate expression; see fig. S18 for individual genes.