Making Ramón y Cajal proud: Development of cell identity and diversity in the cerebral cortex

Daniela J Di Bella; Nuria Domínguez-Iturza; Juliana R Brown; Paola Arlotta

doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2024.04.021

Making Ramón y Cajal proud: Development of cell identity and diversity in the cerebral cortex

Neuron. 2024 May 10:S0896-6273(24)00282-4. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.04.021. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Daniela J Di Bella¹, Nuria Domínguez-Iturza², Juliana R Brown³, Paola Arlotta⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. Electronic address: daniela_dibella@fas.harvard.edu.
² Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. Electronic address: nuriadomingueziturza@fas.harvard.edu.
³ Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA.
⁴ Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA; Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142, USA. Electronic address: paola_arlotta@harvard.edu.

PMID: 38754415
DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2024.04.021

Abstract

Since the beautiful images of Santiago Ramón y Cajal provided a first glimpse into the immense diversity and complexity of cell types found in the cerebral cortex, neuroscience has been challenged and inspired to understand how these diverse cells are generated and how they interact with each other to orchestrate the development of this remarkable tissue. Some fundamental questions drive the field's quest to understand cortical development: what are the mechanistic principles that govern the emergence of neuronal diversity? How do extrinsic and intrinsic signals integrate with physical forces and activity to shape cell identity? How do the diverse populations of neurons and glia influence each other during development to guarantee proper integration and function? The advent of powerful new technologies to profile and perturb cortical development at unprecedented resolution and across a variety of modalities has offered a new opportunity to integrate past knowledge with brand new data. Here, we review some of this progress using cortical excitatory projection neurons as a system to draw out general principles of cell diversification and the role of cell-cell interactions during cortical development.

Keywords: cell-cell interactions; cortical development; extrinsic signaling; gene regulation; neuronal specification.

Publication types

Review