Neural patterning Deconstructing the organizer

Abstract

Since it was discovered over 70 years ago, the ‘organizer’ has been regarded as a group of cells that produces the signals that induce development of neural tissue. Indeed it does, but a new paper shows that it is just one of what could be a series of organizing centres that specify initial patterning of the central nervous system along the anteroposterior and forebrain-to-spinal-cord axes. Unlike the organizer, which is found posterior to the neural ectoderm, the new centre is found at the prospective anterior end of the zebrafish neuraxis.