Generation of neuronal diversity in the peripheral olfactory system in drosophila

Abstract

It is estimated that there are billions of neurons in the human brain. Each of these neurons is thought to play a distinct role in nervous system function. It is the emergent functional properties of these neurons that allow organisms to detect and process information about the complex sensory environment, and successfully navigate through these environments. To perform this task, many neural circuits representing different modalities of sensory information are organized to optimally encode and discriminate the nature of the stimuli. Diversity of neuronal fates that constitute these circuits is generated during development, as cells with high differentiation potentials, such as neural stem/progenitor/precursor cells, divide, communicate and make fate decisions that gradually diversify and restrict the type of cells they can generate. Sensory systems are a particularly interesting place to understand mechanisms of neural diversity as functional types of sensory neurons are under the constraints brought about by the complexity of the sensory world. In this chapter, we will review our current understanding of mechanisms generating neuronal diversity in the visual and olfactory systems (Van Bortle and Corces in Cell 152(6):1213-1217, 2013; Henikoff in Neuron 86(6):1319-1321, 2015; Mo et al. in Neuron 86(6):1369-1384, 2015).