USC Stem Cell scientists chew on the mysteries of jaw development (green – skeletal and magenta – cartilaginous)

“The skeleton, tendons, and glands of a functional jaw all derive from the same population of stem cells, which arise from a cell population known as neural crest. To discover how these neural crest-derived cells know to make the right type of cell in the right location, researchers focused on a particular gene, Nr5a2, that was active in a region of the face that makes tendons and glands, but not skeleton.”        MORE

  Image Credit:  UCSD Stem Cell, Keek School of Medicine USC