During the development of the central nervous system (CNS), extremely large numbers of neurons are produced in a regular fashion to form precise neural circuits. During this process, neural progenitor cells produce different neurons over time due to their intrinsic gene regulatory mechanisms as well as extrinsic mechanisms. The Drosophila CNS has played an important role in elucidating the temporal mechanisms that control neurogenesis over time. It has been shown that a series of temporal transcription factors are sequentially expressed in neural progenitor cells and regulate the temporal specification of neurons in the embryonic CNS. Additionally, similar mechanisms are found in the developing optic lobe and central brain in the larval CNS. However, it is difficult to elucidate the function of numerous molecules in many different cell types solely by molecular genetic approaches. Recently, omics analysis using single-cell RNA-seq and other methods has been used to study the Drosophila nervous system on a large scale and is making a significant contribution to the understanding of the temporal mechanisms of neurogenesis. In this article, recent findings on the temporal patterning of neurogenesis and the contributions of cutting-edge technologies will be reviewed.
Keywords: Drosophila; neural development; temporal patterning.