Neurogenesis from embryo to adult – Lessons from flies and mice

The human brain is composed of billions of cells, including neurons and glia, with an undetermined number of subtypes. During the embryonic and early postnatal stages, the vast majority of these cells are generated from neural progenitors and stem cells located in all regions of the neural tube. A smaller number of neurons will continue to be generated throughout our lives, in localized neurogenic zones, mainly confined at least in rodents to the subependymal zone of the lateral ventricles and the subgranular zone of the hippocampal dentate gyrus. During neurogenesis, a combination of extrinsic cues interacting with temporal and regional intrinsic programs are thought to be critical for increasing neuronal diversity, but their underlying mechanisms need further elucidation. In this review, we discuss the recent findings in Drosophila and mammals on the types of cell division and cell interactions used by neural progenitors and stem cells to sustain neurogenesis, and how they are influenced by glia.This work was supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (BFU2016-76295-R) co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and the Severo Ochoa Program for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2017-0723) to JM, and by the Spanish MICINN grant (SAF2015-70433-R) and PROMETEO/2018/055 grant from Generalitat Valenciana to HM.We acknowledge support for the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Publication Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI).Peer reviewe