Getting a head start: Craniofacial heterochrony in marsupials involves dynamic changes to cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying neural crest migration

Marsupials generate dense pre-migratory neural crest aggregates that emigrate as cohesive E-cadherin-positive, vimentin-negative epithelial-like sheets, enabling rapid craniofacial prominence formation.

• Why it matters: Species-specific craniofacial diversity depends on how neural crest timing shifts, but the cellular and molecular basis of marsupial heterochrony is largely unknown.
• What they did: Across three marsupial species, the study examined neural crest cell behavior and marker expression, using mouse and chicken as comparators, and re-analyzed published marsupial single-cell data.
• The result: The data suggest the mesenchymal transcriptional program is deployed after delamination and migration, implying neural crest migration timing may be shaped by life history as well as phylogeny.

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