The University of York (UOY) • Biology

- To give an overview of genomic imprinting, when it is initiated and how imprinting disorders can arise - Describe key events in X-inactivation including the role of the Xist non-coding RNA

- Discuss the evidence for the nodal morphogen acting during mesoderm induction. - Discuss the concept of the vertebrate dorsal organiser. - Discuss the evidence that the brachyury transcription factor is a conserved regulator of germ layer specification. - Draw conclusions regarding the molecular pathways regulating development of Urbilateria.

- Provide an overview of the polycomb and trithorax group complexes and their activities - Describe evidence that indicates stem cell chromatin is in an open ‘permissive’ state - Understand what is bivalent chromatin and why it may be important for stem cell biology and development - Understand the steps of chromatin immunoprecipitation and why it is a useful technique in epigenetic studies - Describe the Nodal signalling example and experimental approach, and understand how it illustrates ...

- Describe experiments that defined compartments of cell lineage restriction. - Define a compartment and describe the evidence showing that the parasegment is a compartment and the developmentally important unit of the fly. - Describe genetic experiments demonstrating that HOM-C genes regulate parasegment identity in Drosophila. - Evaluate whether the vertebrate Hox genes share a conserved function with Drosophila HomC genes

- Explain the significance of the neural crest lineage to vertebrate anatomy. - Distinguish the ventral-lateral and dorsal pathways of neural crest migration. - Give examples of cell types derived from specific AP regions of neural crest. - Describe and interpret experiments used to ‘fate map’ neural crest cells in avian embryos. - Describe and interpret experiments used to determine the developmental potential of neural crest cells in avian embryos.

- Identify the important signalling centres in the developing limb bud and describe the experiments that identified these centres and demonstrated their importance. - Describe the experimental evidence for the role of FGF signalling in limb bud outgrowth - Describe the experimental evidence that shows that Shh acts as a morphogen to pattern the anterior-posterior axis of the limb bud. - Describe how the important signalling centres in the limb bud co-ordinately regulate pattern formation in the ...

- Appreciate and describe the molecular mechanisms underlying neural induction - Describe TGF-beta (TGF-β) signal transduction and the differences between the BMP versus nodal pathways - Discuss the experiments that demonstrate a role for BMP antagonists in vertebrate neural induction - Describe how antisense morpholino oligos can be used to inhibit gene function - Appreciate and describe the differences between the processes of neural induction versus neurogenesis

-Describe and interpret the embryological experiments that demonstrated a role for the notochord and floorplate in motor neuron induction. -Describe and interpret the experiments that show Shh acts as a morphogen to pattern the ventral neural tube. -Be able to explain the concept of morphogen using examples. -Describe the Shh signal transduction pathway.

-Describe the hierarchy of gene activity that regulates Drosophila segmentation -Distinguish and explain methods used to investigate protein vs mRNA expression -Describe the syncytial nature of the early stages of fly development and understand its significance. -Understand and describe at the molecular level how the Gap genes regulate the expression of Eve stripe 2 -Make predictions about segment polarity gene expression in a pair-rule mutant embryo or about pair-rule gene expression in a Gap m...

- Understand how the neural crest contributes to cardiac development and the pathology underlying congenital cardiac abnormalities. - Explain how certain SNPs might contribute to congenital abnormalities. - Discuss the evidence that Notch signalling is important during cardiac morphogenesis