Delineating the roles of Grhl2 in craniofacial development through tissue-specific conditional deletion and epistasis approaches in mouse

Abstract

Background: The highly conserved Grainyhead-like (Grhl) family of transcription factors play critical roles in the development of the neural tube and craniofacial skeleton. In particular, deletion of family member Grainyhead-like 2 (Grhl2) leads to mid-gestational embryonic lethality, maxillary clefting, abdominoschisis, and both cranial and caudal neural tube closure defects. These highly pleiotropic and systemic defects suggest that Grhl2 plays numerous critical developmental roles to ensure correct morphogenesis and patterning. Results: Here, using four separate Cre-lox conditional deletion models, as well as one genetic epistasis approach (Grhl2+/−;Edn1+/− double heterozygous mice) we ha..