Research has yielded fundamental insights into the causes of severe birth defects known as CHARGE syndrome cases. These congenital birth defects include severe and life-threatening heart malformations. Researchers successfully inactivated the gene for CHD7 in the neural crest cells of mouse embryos, and then rigorously probed how this change in developing cardiac neural crest cells caused severe defects in the outflow tract and great arteries, leading to perinatal lethality.
