Drosophila Neural Stem Cells in Brain Development and Tumor Formation

Abstract

Neuroblasts, the neural stem cells in Drosophila, generate the complex neural structure of the central nervous system. Significant progress has been made in understanding the mechanisms regulating the self-renewal, proliferation, and differentiation in Drosophila neuroblast lineages. Deregulation of these mechanisms can lead to severe developmental defects and the formation of malignant brain tumors. Here, the authors review the molecular genetics of Drosophila neuroblasts and discuss some recent advances in stem cell and cancer biology using this model system.

Keywords::

• brain tumor
• cancer stem cells
• Drosophila
• neural stem cells
• neuroblasts

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Karl-Friedrich Fischbach and Dierk F. Reiff for bringing together many outstanding Drosophila neurobiologists at the conference in Freiburg, and Karl-Friedrich Fischbach and Chun-Fang Wu for excellent editorial work. Our research is supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and SNSF-NFP63 “Stem cells and regenerative medicine.”

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.