LAUSR

Significance Craniofacial birth defects are one of the most common congenital malformations in humans and are caused by defects in neural crest cells. In early vertebrate development, cranial neural crest cells acquire the ability to differentiate into many different cell types to generate the craniofacial structure and peripheral nervous system. To better understand how neural crest are endowed with expanded capacity to generate cells of multiple lineages, we use single-cell multiomic approaches to uncover a role for posttranscriptional regulation to expand chromatin accessibility during the earliest stages of neural crest specification. Our findings provide insight into ways that stem cells can increase their ability to differentiate into multiple cell types, which may improve our ability to generate tissues for regenerative medicine.