Establishing the plane of symmetry for lumen formation and bilateral brain formation in the zebrafish neural rod

Abstract

The lumen of the zebrafish neural tube develops precisely at the midline of the solid neural rod primordium. This process depends on cell polarisation and cell rearrangements, both of which are manifest at the midline of the neural rod. The result of this cell polarisation and cell rearrangement is an epithelial tube that has overt mirror-symmetry, such that cell morphology and apicobasal polarisation are mirrored across the midline of the neural tube. This article discusses how this mirror-symmetry is established and proposes the hypothesis that positioning the cells' centrosomes to the midline of the neural rod is a key event in organising this process.

Keywords: Cell division; Centrosome; Neural tube; Zebrafish.