During development of vertebrate embryos, these transcription factors are crucial in inducing early R428 differentiation programs of neural crest progenitor cells into sensory placodes, oligodendrocytes, sensory neurons of the peripheral nervous system and pigment cells. In zebrafish embryos, orthologs of these genes encode transcription factors crucial for the specification of non-neural ectoderm and neural crest cells into otic and olfactory placodes, pigment cells and the median fin fold. An altered expression of these genes could therefore result in defective neural crest cell specification and migration, which could in turn induce the developmental caveats observed in zebrafish parp3 morphants described above. By whole mount in situ hybridization, we first examined the formation and migration of neural crest cells in parp3 morphants by monitoring the expression of the neural crest cell marker crestin in zebrafish embryos with normal and reduced Parp3 expression. We find that the expression of crestin is indeed altered in parp3 morphants. At 16 hpf, crestin is normally expressed in premigratory neural crest cells and in migratory neural crest cells migrating from the most anterior trunk LY2109761 segments. In parp3 morphants however, the expression of crestin is generally reduced with most of the remaining expression limited to anterior trunk segments. Crestin expression is nearly undetectable in the hindbrain region. At 24 hpf, crestin expression could not be detected in the head and the tail regions, while the expression in the trunk of 24hpf-parp3 morphants appears to be reduced. As crestin was shown to be expressed in all neural crest cells, our observations suggest a general perturbation in neural crest cell development in embryos with reduced Parp3 expression. The data presented here provide the first insights into the biological functions of the PARP family member PARP3. Using biochemical, genomic and in vivo approaches, we identify PARP3 as an important transcriptional regulator acting early in the development of sensory placodes and in the specification of neural crest cells of zebrafish embryos. Collectively, our findings suggest that PARP3 is an early key component in the regulation of the neural plate border formation in vertebrates. The analysis of PARP3 genomic occupancy by ChIP-chip in the human SK-N-SH cells highlighted a predominant localization of chromatin-associated PARP3 around development genes, and in particular those involved in neurogenesis. Remarkably, an in vivo exploration, in the vertebrate animal model zebrafish, of PARP3 target genes identified in a human cell line revealed that the expression of several of these genes are indeed dependent on the expression of parp3 during zebrafish embryonic development.