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Nature News

The brain is built by two progenitor cell types: new experiments challenge the single-starter-cell model

Using tissue staining and RNA sequencing of mouse embryos 7.5 days after conception, red fluorescent lineage tracing, directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells, and a search across monkeys, chickens, zebrafish and even acorn worms, this work proposes that the brain is not made by a single type of starter cell but by two non-mixing progenitor populations, one forming the hindbrain and the other the forebrain and midbrain, and it establishes an efficient way to coax stem cells into hindbrain motor neurons.