Glial differentiation and the Gcm pathway

One of the most challenging issues in developmental biology is to understand how cell diversity is generated. The Drosophila nervous system provides a model of choice for unraveling this process. First, many neural stem cells and lineages have been identified. Second, major molecular pathways involved in neural development and associated mutations have been characterized extensively in recent years. In this review, we focus oil the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the generation of glia. This cell population relies oil the expression of gcm fate determinant, which is necessary and sufficient to induce glial differentiation. life also discuss the recently identified role of gcm genes in Drosophila melanogaster and vertebrate neurogenesis. Finally, we will consider the Gcm pathway in the context of neural stein cell differentiation.