Differential expression of the L10 ribosomal protein during heart development

Neural crest cells originating from the posterior rhombencephalon migrate to the cardiac outflow tract and participate in division of the aorta and pulmonary trunk. Ablation of this region of premigratory neural crest in the chick embryos results in nondivision of the outflow vessels. Subtractive hybridization was used to identify messages in the outflow tract of embryos with cardiac neural crest cells versus those lacking the cardiac neural crest cells. The chick L10 ribosomal protein was found to be differentially expressed in the outflow tract of embryos with cardiac neural crest. Several conditions have been identified that involve differential expression of ribosomal proteins, but this is the first report of differential expression in eukaryotic embryonic development.