Neural Stem Cells and Brain Tumour Models in Drosophila

During development organs and tissues grow in size. This growth can be achieved either by increasing the size of individual cells or by increasing the number of cells by cell proliferation. In an organ like the brain, it is crucial to control the number of cells in order to build functional neuronal circuits. In this chapter, we will look at different types of neural precursor cells in the growing Drosophila larval brain. Each type of neural precursor cell type in Drosophila displays a rather stereotype division pattern. Different modes of division serve to either expand or to differentiate the precursor cell pool. We will learn that different division modes will lead to vastly different outcomes in terms of the generated cell lineage size. The different neural precursor types use also different timings and cellular mechanisms to terminate proliferation once the correct number of progeny cells is reached.