Cell-intrinsic regulators of proliferation in vertebrate retinal progenitors.

The proliferative expansion of retinal progenitor cells (RPCs) is a fundamental mechanism of growth during vertebrate retinal development. Over the past couple of years, significant progress has been made in identifying genes expressed in RPCs that are essential for their proliferation, and the molecular mechanisms are beginning to be resolved. In this review, we highlight recent studies that have identified regulatory components of the RPC cell cycle machinery and implicate a set of homeobox genes as key regulators of proliferative expansion in the retina.