The Dorsal Neural Tube: Cell Fate Decicision

Today in class we reviewed a paper about the neural tube, and the fates of the cells that are involved. The paper was a review paper and was suggesting that the spatial and temporal information in the dorsal neural tube determines the segregation and derivatives of the neural crest tubes. There is a detailed figure in the paper(Fig 1) that shows the migration of the different cells of the neural tube, and the types of tissues they end up being incorporated in. They also have a figure about gene expression in the neural tube, and that these genes are turned off and on during different parts of delamination of the cells. Some genes are turned on early to help set the pattern and some genes are turned on late to set the fates of the cells. Overall the paper was a little difficult to understand since my knowledge of neurbiology is limited to what I've learned in class, but I find it fascinating how there are so many tiny details and all different cell types and genes have to cooperate together to form proper and functional tissue
. doe_neural_stem_cells.pdf