Investigation of the Cellular and Molecular Mechanisms of Facial Branchiomotor Neuron Migration

A fundamental feature of brain development is the migration of neurons from their place of birth to the location where they will assemble and integrate into a neural circuit. We have recently reported that one facial branchiomotor neuron (FBMN) can influence the migration of another FBMN, defining this cell movement as a collective migration. As with any collective migration, cell‐to‐cell contact is required for one cell's influence on another. To determine if this was the case, we imaged the migration of membrane‐mCherry‐expressing FBMNs in live zebrafish embryos. We find that some neurons display persistent, sustained migration in one direction (posterior), whereas other FBMNs stall for short periods of time. We noticed that FBMNs stalled in migration shortly after cell‐to‐cell contact with neuron in their migratory path. This is reminiscent of contact inhibition of locomotion (CIL) observed for many other cell types including neural crest cells. We therefore, quantified the speed and direction of neuron movement before and after neuron‐to‐neuron cell contacts. Consistent with this, centrosomes, which often re‐orient in the direction of migration, were often found on the anterior side of migrating FBMNs. Previous work has shown that planar cell polarity (PCP) genes are essential for FBMN migration. Here we show that PCP mutant neurons migrate in random directions suggesting that PCP proteins are not required for migration per se, but are required for persistent directed movements. Taken together these data suggest the possibility that PCP proteins control contact‐dependent cell polarization in FBMN migration.