Studies of cell commitment and gene expression suggest that the subdiv
ision of the hindbrain into segments and the specification of their an
teroposterior identity emerges from a prepattern in the early neural p
late. This prepattern imposes a regional specification, but not a comm
itment of individual cells to specific segments, and may involve the s
patial expression of the Krox-20 and Hox genes. The generation of null
mutants has shown that the Krox-20 gene is required for the formation
of definitive r3 and r5, and the Hoxa-1 gene is required for r4 and r
5 development. A mouse mutant, kreisler, has disrupted hindbrain segme
ntation, with r5 and r6 failing to form. Studies of gene expression in
these mutants suggest that the kreisler gene has an early role, where
as the Krox-20 and Hoxa-1 genes have later roles in the formation of d
efinitive segments. I propose that a community effect of cell-cell sig
naling may underlie the commitment of cells to specific segments and d
iscuss the implications of this for the phenotype of segmentation muta
nts. The receptor tyrosine kinases encoded by the Sek-1, Sek-2, Sek-3,
and Sek-4 genes are segmentally expressed and could mediate cell-cell
interactions that regulate cell commitment and hindbrain segmentation
.