Gamma-ray emitting narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies and their place in the AGN zoo

Relativistic jets are usually produced by radio-loud AGN hosted in giant elliptical galaxies such as blazars and radio galaxies. The discovery by Fermi-LAT of variable gamma-ray emission from narrow-line Seyfert 1 (NLSy1) galaxies revealed the presence of a new class of AGN with relativistic jets. Considering that NLSy1 are usually hosted in spiral galaxies, this finding poses intriguing questions about the nature of these objects and the formation of relativistic jets. In this talk I discuss the radio-to-gamma-ray properties of the gamma-ray NLSy1 detected during the first 7 years of Fermi operation, the observations of their host galaxies, and the estimation of their black hole masses