RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Ephrin-B2 Paces Neuronal Production in the Developing Neocortex
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.01.10.901587
DO 10.1101/2020.01.10.901587
A1 Anthony Kischel
A1 Christophe Audouard
A1 Mohamad-Ali Fawal
A1 Alice Davy
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/01/10/2020.01.10.901587.abstract
AB Background During mammalian cerebral cortex development, different types of projection neurons are produced in a precise temporal order and in stereotypical numbers. The mechanisms regulating timely generation of neocortex projection neurons and ensuring production in sufficient numbers of each neuronal identity is only partially understood.Results Here, we show that ephrin-B2, a member of the Eph:ephrin cell-to-cell communication pathway, sets the neurogenic tempo in the neocortex. Indeed, conditional mutant embryos for ephrin-B2 exhibit a transient delay in neurogenesis and acute stimulation of Eph signaling by in utero injection of synthetic ephrin-B2 led to a transient increase in neuronal production. Using genetic approaches we show that ephrin-B2 acts on neural progenitors to control their differentiation in a juxtacrine manner. Unexpectedly, we observed that perinatal neuron numbers recovered following both loss or gain of ephrin-B2, highlighting the ability of neural progenitors to adapt their behavior to the state of the system in order to produce stereotypical numbers of neurons.Conclusions Altogether, our data uncover a role for ephrin-B2 in embryonic neurogenesis and emphasizes the plasticity of neuronal production in the neocortex.