Principles of Development notes

All lectures summarized into detail including experimental evidence given during the lectures.

All lectures of the course molecular principles of development (NWI-BB084B) are covered in the document (using powerpoint slides, additional information from the lectures and the book). The book used for this course was: molecular principles of development, the 6th Revised edition. The pictures included are taken from the PowerPoint slides and the book. I passed the course using this document.

This is a summary of all lectures in the course.

An extensive summary of the information given during the course Molecular Principles of Development (NWI-BB084B) in English. With images, self-study assignments and developmental processes incorporated and explained.

- Provide an overview of the polycomb and trithorax group complexes and their activities - Describe evidence that indicates stem cell chromatin is in an open ‘permissive’ state - Understand what is bivalent chromatin and why it may be important for stem cell biology and development - Understand the steps of chromatin immunoprecipitation and why it is a useful technique in epigenetic studies - Describe the Nodal signalling example and experimental approach, and understand how it illustrates ...

- To give an overview of genomic imprinting, when it is initiated and how imprinting disorders can arise - Describe key events in X-inactivation including the role of the Xist non-coding RNA

- Understand how the neural crest contributes to cardiac development and the pathology underlying congenital cardiac abnormalities. - Explain how certain SNPs might contribute to congenital abnormalities. - Discuss the evidence that Notch signalling is important during cardiac morphogenesis

- Identify the important signalling centres in the developing limb bud and describe the experiments that identified these centres and demonstrated their importance. - Describe the experimental evidence for the role of FGF signalling in limb bud outgrowth - Describe the experimental evidence that shows that Shh acts as a morphogen to pattern the anterior-posterior axis of the limb bud. - Describe how the important signalling centres in the limb bud co-ordinately regulate pattern formation in the ...

- To have gained an understanding of why epigenetics is relevant to development - To understand that DNA methylation can impact gene expression and be able to describe an experimental approach to test this - To explain how patterns of DNA methylation can be maintained through DNA replication - To understand that covalent histone modifications form a code that can impact gene expression - To explain how some histone modifications can be maintained through DNA replication

- Discuss the evidence supporting a role for tinman homologues in heart development - Discuss the anatomical and molecular evidence supporting the theory of dorsoventral axis inversion during the evolution of protostome and deuterostome lineages. - Describe the conserved features of Hox gene cluster organisation. - Appreciate and discuss how changes in the expression and activity of Hox genes have contributed to changes in anatomy during animal evolution. - Draw conclusions regarding the molecul...