Gene expression profiling of the tongue in Tgfbr2 mutant mouse models

The overall goal of this project is to investigate the role of TGF-beta signaling in tongue development in order to study the contribution of cranial neural crest (CNC) cells towards the patterning of cranial mesoderm for proper tongue formation. Here, we conducted gene expression profiling of embryonic tongue tissue from wild type mice as well as those with a neural crest specific conditional inactivation of the Tgfbr2 gene. The latter mice provide a model of microglossia, a common congenital birth defect which is frequently observed with several syndromic conditions. To investigate the mechanism of microglossia resulting from dysfunctional TGF-Beta signaling during muscle development, we analyzed neural crest specific conditional inactivation of Tgfbr2 in mice (Tgfbr2fl/fl;Wnt1-Cre). We performed microarray analyses of tongue tissue of Tgfbr2fl/fl;Wnt1-Cre mutant mice and Tgfbr2fl/fl control mice at embryonic day E14.5 (n=3 per genotype) to examine the genes regulated by Tgf-beta during tongue muscle development.