Snail-related transcriptional repressors are required in Xenopus for both the induction of the neural crest and its subsequent migration.

The neural crest is a transient population of precursor cells that arises at the border between the neural plate and prospective epidermis in vertebrate embryos. The earliest known response to neural-crest-inducing signals is the expression of the zinc-finger transcription factors slug and snail. Although it is widely believed that these transcription factors play an essential role in neural crest development, relatively little is understood about their mechanism of action during this process. We have previously shown that overexpression of XSlug leads to expanded expression of neural crest markers and an excess of at least one neural crest derivative, melanocytes. In order to further investigate XSlug function, we overexpressed mutant constructs in which the DNA-binding domain was fused to either the activation domain from Gal4 or the repressor domain from Drosophila Engrailed. The Engrailed repressor fusion was found to mimic the effects of wild-type XSlug, indicating that XSlug functions as a transcriptional repressor during neural crest formation. In contrast, overexpression of either the activation domain fusion or the DNA-binding domain alone was found to inhibit XSlug function. Using a hormone-inducible inhibitory mutant, we show that inhibition of XSlug function at early stages prevents the formation of neural crest precursors, while inhibition at later stages interferes with neural crest migration, demonstrating for the first time that this transcriptional repressor is required during multiple stages of neural crest development.