QBI Neuroscience Seminar: Cell fate specification in the developing cerebral cortex

Event Details

Date:

Wednesday, 05 October 2016

Time:

12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

Room:

QBI Level 7 Auditorium

UQ Location:

Queensland Brain Institute (St Lucia)

URL:

http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/neuroscience-seminars

Event category(s):

Full Description:: Professor Shuba Tole
Department of Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India

Title: Cell fate specification in the developing cerebral cortex

Abstract: In the developing cerebral cortex, sequential transcriptional programs take neuroepithelial cells from proliferating progenitors to differentiated neurons with unique molecular identities. The regulatory changes that occur in the chromatin of the progenitors are not well understood. We discovered a new player in the regulation of cortical neuronal subtype identity, transcription factor Lhx2, that regulates the numbers of specific cortical output neuron subtypes by controlling the genes that are required to produce them. Loss or increase in Lhx2 during neurogenesis is sufficient to increase or decrease, respectively, the sub-cerebrally projecting neuronal population. Mechanistically, Lhx2 interacts with members of the NuRD histone remodeling complex to edit the chromatin landscape of specific target genes. These findings suggest that the endogenous graded expression of Lhx2 in the cortical neuroepithelium could have a biological significance- regulating the neuronal subtype complements in different cortical areas, and thereby controlling the development of cortical circuitry.