Genes and cell type specification in cerebellar development

Abstract

One of the key goals of neural development is to make specific cell types that originate from multipotent progenitor cells. The process of cell specification is only beginning to be understood. Evidence thus far suggests that it occurs in a stepwise fashion, and it is likely that each step requires the coordinated expression of a unique set of genes. The cerebellum is an excellent model system for understanding cell fate questions because it contains only a handful of defined cell types that are each located in a specific lamina and are therefore easily identified. These features have made the cerebellum an essential brain region in the understanding of the gene networks that give rise to specific cell types during development. This chapter will first discuss recent advances in parsing the pathways necessary to produce specific cerebellar cell types. Next, the open-source cerebellar GRiTS (Gene Regulation in Time and Space) project (CBGRiTS.org), which has amassed a microarray-based readout of cerebellar gene expression on a daily basis during embryogenesis and every 3 days postnatally, will be discussed. Finally, efforts to mine this transcriptomic information using novel bioinformatic tools to search for new genes that may confer cell-type specificity during cerebellar development will also be discussed.