Choosing a cellular identity: a brief history of time

One of the major challenges of developmental neurobiology is to understand how the extraordinary diversity of cellular types that make up the nervous system is generated.

Elise Cau, Brice Ronsin, Laurianne Bessière and Patrick Blader of CBD, in a study published in Plos Biology, identified a new mechanism in which, after division, the two sister cells activate a signalling pathway at different times, thus generating greater cell diversity from the same progenitor.


See online on the website of the CNRS Institute of Biological Sciences.

 

Reference

A Notch-mediated, temporal asymmetry in BMP pathway activation promotes photoreceptor subtype diversification.

Cau E, Ronsin B, Bessière L, Blader P.

PLoS Biol. 2019 Jan 31;17(1):e2006250. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.2006250. eCollection 2019 Jan.

 

Researcher contact

Elise Cau

Chercheuse CNRS

+33 61 55 78 90