Preventing apoptosis (right) enables an NSC (outlined) to make more neurons than usual.

Gould/Elsevier

The number of neurons in an adult fly is determined by a death-inducing blast of a homeodomain protein, based on results from Bruno Bello, Frank Hirth, and Alex Gould (National Institute for Medical Research, UK).

When the fly larva hatches, neurons are nearly evenly distributed along the major body axis. But in the adult, they are more numerous in the segments of the thorax than the abdomen, in part because neural stem cells (NSCs) in the thorax divide for a longer period of time. The new article describes “how division is stopped in its tracks and why this happens earlier in the abdomen than in the thorax,” says Gould.

His group has found that a pulse of an abdomen-specific Hox transcription factor, called AbdA, in late larval stage NSCs determined the...

The Rockefeller University Press
2003
The Rockefeller University Press
2003
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