... for organ repair. Using conversion of brain glia into induced neurons as an example, this Spotlight highlights conceptual advances and technical challenges. Adeno-associated virus Brain repair Direct reprogramming Glia-to-neuron conversion Proneural Regenerative medicine Wellcome Trust...

... factors that function during proneural specification were identified and studied in detail. Perturbations of these proneural transcription factors showed that specification occurs differently in each neural domain prior to the Delta-Notch restriction signal. Though gene regulatory network state changes...

... Neurogenesis Nematostella Cnidarian Proneural The evolution of centralized nervous systems in bilaterians, a diverse group of animals that includes insects and man, was a key innovation that led to overwhelming success and diversity. Gene expression patterns and limited functional studies...

... of Hes1 , as a key gene in regulating otic neurogenesis through the definition of the posterolateral non-neurogenic field. First, her9 emerges as a novel otic patterning gene that represses proneural function and regulates the extent of the neurogenic domain. Second, we place Her9 downstream of Tbx1...

... unknown. We previously found that Wnt signaling, acting through Sox2, promotes neural competence in the Xenopus retina by activating proneural gene expression. We now report that Wnt and Sox2 inhibit neural differentiation through Notch activation. Independently of Sox2, Wnt stimulates retinal progenitor...

...Christophe Galichet; François Guillemot; Carlos M. Parras The dentate gyrus (DG) of the hippocampus has a central role in learning and memory in adult rodents. The DG is generated soon after birth, although new neurons continue to be generated in the DG throughout life. The proneural factors Mash1...

...Rie Saba; Jane E. Johnson; Tetsuichiro Saito Proneural basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) proteins are key regulators of neurogenesis. However, downstream target genes of the bHLH proteins remain poorly defined. Mbh1 confers commissural neuron identity in the spinal cord. Enhancer analysis using...

..., including the PVQ/HSN/PHB neuroblast, a cell that generates the PVQ interneuron, the HSN motoneuron and the PHB sensory neuron. hlh-14 mutants lack all three of these neurons. The fact that HLH-14 promotes all three classes of neuron indicates that C. elegans proneural bHLH factors may act less specifically...

...Janghoo Lim; Kwang-Wook Choi Atonal (Ato)/Math (Mammalian atonal homolog) family proneural proteins are key regulators of neurogenesis in both vertebrates and invertebrates. In the Drosophila eye, Ato is essential for the generation of photoreceptor neurons. Ato expression is initiated...

...Petra I. zur Lage; David R. A. Prentice; Eimear E. Holohan; Andrew P. Jarman Proneural genes encode basic-helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors required for neural precursor specification. Recently amos was identified as a new candidate Drosophila proneural gene related to atonal . Having...

...Nikolaos Giagtzoglou; Pavlos Alifragis; Konstantinos A. Koumbanakis; Christos Delidakis The decision of ectodermal cells to adopt the sensory organ precursor fate in Drosophila is controlled by two classes of basic-helix-loop-helix transcription factors: the proneural Ac and Sc activators promote...

...Neil M. White; Andrew P. Jarman During Drosophila eye development, the proneural gene atonal specifies founding R8 photoreceptors of individual ommatidia, evenly spaced relative to one another in a pattern that prefigures ommatidial organisation in the mature compound eye. Beyond providing neural...

...Petra zur Lage; Andrew P. Jarman ABSTRACT The selection of Drosophila melanogaster sense organ precursors (SOPs) for sensory bristles is a progressive process: each neural equivalence group is transiently defined by the expression of proneural genes (proneural cluster), and neural fate is refined...

...Andrew P. Jarman; Michael Brand; Lily Y. Jan; Yuh Nung Jan ABSTRACT asense is a member of the achaete-scute complex (AS-C) of helix-loop-helix genes involved in Drosophila neurogenesis. Unlike the other AS-C members, which are expressed in subsets of the ectodermal areas (proneural clusters...