Sisu Han, Satoshi Okawa, Grey Atteridge Wilkinson, Hussein Ghazale, Lata Adnani, Rajiv Dixit, Ligia Tavares, Imrul Faisal, Matthew J Brooks, Veronique Cortay, Dawn Zinyk, Adam Sivitilli, Saiqun Li, Faizan Malik, Yaroslav Ilnytskyy, Vladimir Espinosa Angarica, Jinghua Gao, Vorapin Chinchalongporn, Ana-Maria Oproescu, Lakshmy Vasan, Yacine Touahri, Luke Ajay David, Eko Raharjo, Jung-Woong Kim, Wei Wu, Waleed Rahmani, Jennifer Ai-Wen Chan, Igor Kovalchuk, Liliana Attisano, Deborah Kurrasch, Colette Dehay, Anand Swaroop, Diogo S Castro, Jeff Biernaskie, Antonio Del Sol, Carol Schuurmans
Asymmetric neuronal expansion is thought to drive evolutionary transitions between lissencephalic and gyrencephalic cerebral cortices. We report that Neurog2 and Ascl1 proneural genes together sustain neurogenic continuity and lissencephaly in rodent cortices. Using transgenic reporter mice and human cerebral organoids, we found that Neurog2 and Ascl1 expression defines a continuum of four lineage-biased neural progenitor cell (NPC) pools. Double+ NPCs, at the hierarchical apex, are least lineage restricted due to Neurog2-Ascl1 cross-repression and display unique features of multipotency (more open chromatin, complex gene regulatory network, G2 pausing)...
August 11, 2021: Neuron