Walsh C
Department of Genetics, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02215.
Perspect Dev Neurobiol. 1993;1(2):75-80.
The cerebral cortex is the largest structure in the mammalian brain and shows compartmentalization of distinct functions into cortical areas. How does this compartmentalization arise during development? In studies of cell lineage, dividing progenitor cells are labeled to produce clones of labeled adult cortical neurons, so that patterns of clones can be related to the functional architecture of the cortex. A library, consisting of many genetically distinct retroviruses, distinguishable with polymerase chain reaction amplification, allows the cells of a clone to be tagged and traced even when they disperse widely. Recent results indicate that progenitor cells frequently give rise to cortical neurons with heterogeneous cytoarchitectonic locations and functional roles. This suggests that cytoarchitectonic areas arise through mechanisms requiring intercellular communication, rather than inheriting signals about their functional roles from progenitor cells.
大脑皮层是哺乳动物大脑中最大的结构，不同功能在皮层区域呈现出分区化。这种分区化在发育过程中是如何产生的呢？在细胞谱系研究中，对正在分裂的祖细胞进行标记，以产生标记的成年皮层神经元克隆，这样克隆模式就可以与皮层的功能结构相关联。一个由许多基因不同的逆转录病毒组成的文库，可通过聚合酶链反应扩增来区分，即使克隆细胞广泛分散，也能对其进行标记和追踪。最近的研究结果表明，祖细胞经常产生具有异质细胞结构位置和功能作用的皮层神经元。这表明细胞结构区域是通过需要细胞间通讯的机制产生的，而不是从祖细胞继承关于其功能作用的信号。
