Expression of chicken slug and snail in mesenchymal components of the developing central nervous system.

Slug and Snail are members of the Snail family of zinc-finger transcription factors. They are involved in triggering epithelial-mesenchymal transitions during the development of the neural crest and the mesoderm. We have analyzed by in situ hybridization their expression in the nervous system of chicken embryos at mid-gestation stages, from 4 to 15 days of incubation. We show that Slug and Snail show specific and nonoverlapping expression patterns in mesenchymal structures associated to the developing central nervous system. While Slug is expressed in the meninges and in the pericytes/vascular smooth muscle cells (vSMCs) of the brain, the spinal cord and other embryonic tissues, Snail is expressed in the stroma of the choroid plexus of both the hindbrain and the forebrain. Copyright 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc.