Acts early in neural crest formation, functioning redundantly with the other group E Sox factors sox8 and sox9 to induce neural crest progenitors. Acts downstream of wnt-signaling at the neural plate border. Involved in the specification of neural crest progenitors fated to form the pigment cell lineage. Interacts with the sumoylation factors ube2i/ubc9 and sumo1. First expressed at stages 13/14 at the lateral edges of the neural plate, in the neural crest forming region. By stage 22, neural crest cells migrate in the cranial region and strong expression is seen in the crest cells that populate the branchial arches as well as those migrating in the frontonasal region. Also strongly expressed in the trunk neural crest. Expression in the otic vesicle begins around stage 25 and persists until at least stage 40. At stage 30, expression is down-regulated in the cranial neural crest of the pharyngeal arches but persists in the trunk neural crest, in the otic vesicle and in discrete domains adjacent to the hindbrain. At stage 40, expression is restricted to the otic vesicle, differentiated pigment cells, and in several cranial ganglia. By sox8, sox9 and snai1/snail, wnt-signaling and fgf-signaling in the neural crest-forming region. The transactivation domains TAM and TAC (for transactivation domain in the middle and at the C-terminus, respectively) are required to contact transcriptional coactivators and basal transcriptional machinery components and thereby induce gene transactivation. Sumoylated. Loss of neural crest precursors. Also an increase in apoptosis and a decrease in cell proliferation in the neural fold. Although PubMed:12812785 report induction by snai2/slug, PubMed:12885557 report that sox10 lies in between snai1/snail and snai2/slug in the complex sequence of inductive events required for neural crest formation.