Effects of altered expression of the neural cell adhesion molecule, N-CAM, on early neural development in Xenopus embryos

The neural cell adhesion molecule, N-CAM, is known to be expressed very early in the development of the vertebrate nervous system. In frog embryos, N-CAM expression increases dramatically in ectoderm coincident with the formation of the neural plate and tube, suggesting that morphogenesis of the early nervous system is controlled in part by differential expression of N-CAM. This model was tested by introducing synthetic N-CAM transcripts into Xenopus embryos so that N-CAM was indiscriminately expressed at high levels on the surface of both induced and noninduced ectodermal cells throughout gastrulation and neurulation. Analysis of these embryos shows that high levels of N-CAM misexpression do not effect neural tube formation even though ectopic expression of N-CAM in epidermis and somitic mesoderm caused specific defects in the structure of these tissues. By showing that the properly regulated expression of N-CAM is not essential for neural tube formation, these results provide compelling evidence that N-CAM on its own does not act as a regulatory molecule during early neural development.