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Neuroscience

Stem cells in multiple time zones

Nature volume 498, pages 441–443 (2013)Cite this article

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In fruitfly larvae, neural stem cells generate different cell types at different times. It emerges that these temporal progressions are controlled by multiple cascades of gene transcription factors. See Articles p.449 & p.456

During development of the central nervous system, neural stem cells are given 'GPS coordinates' — positional information that instructs them on what types of neuronal and glial cell to make and where. There is increasing evidence1,2,3 that these cells also require 'clock input': temporal information that allows them to generate different cell types at different times, with a fixed birth order. Such temporal progressions have been observed even in cultures of single neural stem cells4,5,6. In two papers in this issue, Bayraktar and Doe7 (page 449) and Li et al.8 (page 456) identify regulatory molecular cascades that ensure proper temporal progression of neural stem cells in the fruitfly Drosophila melanogasterFootnote 1.

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Figure 1: Time-dependent evolution of neural lineage trees.

Notes

  1. *This article and the papers under discussion7,8 were published online on 19 June 2013.

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  1. Stefan Thor is in the Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, Linköping University, Linköping 58185, Sweden.,

    Stefan Thor

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Correspondence to Stefan Thor.

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Thor, S. Stem cells in multiple time zones. Nature 498, 441–443 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature12261

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