AUTHOR=Lasser Micaela , Pratt Benjamin , Monahan Connor , Kim Seung Woo , Lowery Laura Anne TITLE=The Many Faces of Xenopus: Xenopus laevis as a Model System to Study Wolf–Hirschhorn Syndrome JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physiology VOLUME=10 YEAR=2019 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physiology/articles/10.3389/fphys.2019.00817 DOI=10.3389/fphys.2019.00817 ISSN=1664-042X ABSTRACT=
Wolf–Hirschhorn syndrome (WHS) is a rare developmental disorder characterized by intellectual disability and various physical malformations including craniofacial, skeletal, and cardiac defects. These phenotypes, as they involve structures that are derived from the cranial neural crest, suggest that WHS may be associated with abnormalities in neural crest cell (NCC) migration. This syndrome is linked with assorted mutations on the short arm of chromosome 4, most notably the microdeletion of a critical genomic region containing several candidate genes. However, the function of these genes during embryonic development, as well as the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the disorder, are still unknown. The model organism