From Understanding the Development Landscape of the Canonical Fate-Switch Pair to Constructing a Dynamic Landscape for Two-Step Neural Differentiation
Figure 4
Manually-curated minimal GRN for central nervous system differentiation and network design explaining differentiation.
(a) The manually-curated minimal network for CNS differentiation. The network mainly consists of two steps of two mutually-inhibited fate commitment genes (boxes with red color lines): the first step determines the commitment of neurons or glia where the second step determines that of astrocyte and oligodendrocyte. From left to right, the three boxes below the fate switch circuits includes neurogenesis, astrogenesis and oligodendrogenesis related transcription factors and markers, respectively. Real lines are literature confirmed regulations while dotted lines are proposed regulation in CNS development (See Tab. S1). The skeleton of this network includes two coupled three-gene networks in subgraph b. (b) The basic motif for the CNS differentiation network where one progenitor gene (A) activates the expression of two mutual-inhibited downstream genes (B and C). This motif (with the self-activation) also corresponds to our proposed network design for explaining differentiation where gene A represents OKSM while B and C two distinct fate commitment genes.