Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p>Area-specific excitatory neuron subtypes emerge before sensory experience</jats:p>

<jats:p>Why is a remote Colombian town a hot spot of an inherited intellectual disability?</jats:p>

<jats:p>To understand how neurons assemble to form functional circuits, it is necessary to obtain a detailed knowledge of their diversity and to define the developmental specification programs that give rise to this diversity. Invertebrates and vertebrates appear to share common developmental principles of neuronal specification in which cascades of transcription factors temporally pattern progenitors, while spatial cues modify the outcomes of this temporal patterning. Here, we highlight these conserved mechanisms and describe how they are used in distinct neural structures. We present the questions that remain for a better understanding of neuronal specification. Single-cell RNA profiling approaches will potentially shed light on these questions, allowing not only the characterization of neuronal diversity in adult brains, but also the investigation of the developmental trajectories leading to the generation and maintenance of this diversity.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Glia constitute roughly half of the cells of the central nervous system (CNS) but were long-considered to be static bystanders to its formation and function. Here we provide an overview of how the diverse and dynamic functions of glial cells orchestrate essentially all aspects of nervous system formation and function. Radial glia, astrocytes, oligodendrocyte progenitor cells, oligodendrocytes, and microglia each influence nervous system development, from neuronal birth, migration, axon specification, and growth through circuit assembly and synaptogenesis. As neural circuits mature, distinct glia fulfill key roles in synaptic communication, plasticity, homeostasis, and network-level activity through dynamic monitoring and alteration of CNS structure and function. Continued elucidation of glial cell biology, and the dynamic interactions of neurons and glia, will enrich our understanding of nervous system formation, health, and function.</jats:p>

<jats:p>Cross-talk between the nervous and immune systems has been well described in the context of adult physiology and disease. Recent advances in our understanding of immune cell ontogeny have revealed a notable interplay between neurons and microglia during the prenatal and postnatal emergence of functional circuits. This Review focuses on the brain, where the early symbiotic relationship between microglia and neuronal cells critically regulates wiring, contributes to sex-specific differences in neural circuits, and relays crucial information from the periphery, including signals derived from the microbiota. These observations underscore the importance of studying neurodevelopment as part of a broader framework that considers nervous system interactions with microglia in a whole-body context.</jats:p>

<jats:p>The six-layered neocortex of the mammalian pallium has no clear homolog in birds or non-avian reptiles. Recent research indicates that although these extant amniotes possess a variety of divergent and nonhomologous pallial structures, they share a conserved set of neuronal cell types and circuitries. These findings suggest a principle of brain evolution: that natural selection preferentially preserves the integrity of information-processing pathways, whereas other levels of biological organization, such as the three-dimensional architectures of neuronal assemblies, are less constrained. We review the similarities of pallial neuronal cell types in amniotes, delineate candidate gene regulatory networks for their cellular identities, and propose a model of developmental evolution for the divergence of amniote pallial structures.</jats:p>