Myron Gordon Award Lecture 2023: Painting the neural crest: How studying pigment cells illuminates neural crest cell biology

Abstract

It has been 30 (!!) years since I began working on zebrafish pigment cells, as a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard. There, I participated in the first large-scale mutagenesis screen in zebrafish, focusing on pigment cell mutant phenotypes. The isolation of colourless, shady, parade and choker mutants allowed us (as a postdoc in Prof. Judith Eisen's laboratory, and then in my own laboratory at the University of Bath since 1997) to pursue my ambition to address long-standing problems in the neural crest field. Thus, we have studied how neural crest cells choose individual fates, resulting in our recent proposal of a new, and potentially unifying, model which we call Cyclical Fate Restriction, as well as addressing how pigment cell patterns are generated. A key feature of our work in the last 10 years has been the use of mathematical modelling approaches to clarify our biological models and to refine our interpretations. None of this would have been possible without a hugely talented group of laboratory members and other collaborators from around the world—it has been, and I am sure will continue to be, a pleasure and privilege to work with you all!