Practice Questions

TLS Online TPP Program

#Question id: 7147

How does lateral inhibition work to specify individual neurons in the neural epithelium of invertebrates and vertebrates?

#Unit 5. Developmental Biology

Prospective neurons first arise in a cluster, but then, by chance, one cell will come to signal more strongly through Delta and Notch than its neighbors and become the only neuron in the cluster, by inhibiting its neighbors' specification as neurons.
Stripes of prospective neurons will inhibit formation of neurons in stripes lateral to themselves.
A gradient of inhibition spreads from the cells lateral to the neural epithelium, inhibiting their specification of neurons until a threshold is reached, at which point a single neuron is permitted to develop.
Only one cell in each cluster of prospective neurons is fated to become a neuron, and it does so by inhibiting neural development in its lateral neighbors.