Description
The overall goal of this project is to investigate the role of TGF-beta signaling in tongue development in order to study the contribution of cranial neural crest (CNC) cells towards the patterning of cranial mesoderm for proper tongue formation. Here, we conducted gene expression profiling of embryonic tongue tissue from wild type mice as well as those with a neural crest specific conditional inactivation of the Tgfbr2 gene. The latter mice provide a model of microglossia, a common congenital birth defect which is frequently observed with several syndromic conditions.