Abstract
Among all organs of an adult animal, the central nervous system stands out because of its vast complexity and morphological diversity. During early development, the entire central nervous system develops from an apparently homogenous group of progenitors that differentiate into all neural cell types. Therefore, understanding the molecular and genetic mechanisms that give rise to the cellular and anatomical diversity of the brain is a key goal of the developmental neurobiology field. With this aim in mind, the development of the central nervous system of model organisms has been extensively studied. From more than a century, the mechanisms of neurogenesis have been studied in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. The visual system comprises one of the major structures of the Drosophila brain. The visual information is collected by the eye-retina photoreceptors and then processed by the four optic lobe ganglia: the lamina, medulla, lobula and lobula plate. The molecular mechanisms that originate neuronal diversity in the optic lobe have been unveiled in the past decade. In this article, we describe the early development and differentiation of the lobula plate ganglion, from the formation of the optic placode and the inner proliferation center to the specification of motion detection neurons. We focused specifically on how the precise combination of signaling pathways and cell-specific transcription factors patterns the pool of neural stem cells that generates the different neurons of the motion detection system.
Highlights
The vast morphological and cellular diversity displayed by the anatomy of the nervous system has fascinated neuroscientists for centuries
After several decades studying the development of distinct regions of the Drosophila central nervous system, it has become clear that there are common strategies used to produce the vast diversity of neuronal types found in this system
We describe the development of the Drosophila optic lobe and analyze recent findings on the mechanisms of neurogenesis in the visual system
Summary
The vast morphological and cellular diversity displayed by the anatomy of the nervous system has fascinated neuroscientists for centuries. After several decades studying the development of distinct regions of the Drosophila central nervous system, it has become clear that there are common strategies used to produce the vast diversity of neuronal types found in this system These strategies include: the different modes of neural stem cell division (symmetric and asymmetric, Figure 1A), the spatial patterning of neurogenic tissue across the antero-posterior and dorso-ventral axes (Figure 1B), and the generation of distinct progenies from the same neural stem cell during several temporal windows defined by the expression of different transcription factors (Figure 1C). The Notch receptor and its downstream targets of the Enhancer of split complex, E(spl)mβ-HLH and TABLE 1 | Summary of genes that regulate optic lobe development in Drosophila melanogaster
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