Neurogenesis articles from across Nature Portfolio

Virtual reality sports offer a novel and effective strategy to reduce fat mass and holistically promote metabolic, physical, psychological and cognitive health in adolescents with excess body weight, yielding similar, and at times superior, benefits compared with conventional real-world sports.

Pioneer neurons extend their axons to provide a track for follower neurons to follow, whether these neurons differ in other ways has not been clear. Here they show that pioneer and follower neurons are transcriptionally distinct and that RA signaling is required for pioneer axon targeting.

RFC1 is a replication and repair protein, and mutations to this gene are associated with rare movement disorders like late-onset cerebellar ataxias. Here they show that RFC1 is essential for zebrafish cerebellar development by preserving genome integrity in neural progenitors during neurogenesis.

The role of nicotinic acetylcholine receptors in human cortical development remains largely unexplored. Here authors investigate CHRNA7 and CHRFAM7A, uncovering their involvement in radial glial cell proliferation and neuronal differentiation, and identify YAP1 as a downstream effector of cholinergic signaling.

The blood ApoM-S1P complex regulates vascular functions, but its role in neurogenic niches remains unclear. Here, the authors show that the blood ApoM-S1P complex preserves V-SVZ homeostasis and protects against early features of Alzheimer’s disease.

Virtual reality sports offer a novel and effective strategy to reduce fat mass and holistically promote metabolic, physical, psychological and cognitive health in adolescents with excess body weight, yielding similar, and at times superior, benefits compared with conventional real-world sports.

A preprint by Dolci et al. reports that tumour-associated macrophages secrete SPP1 to drive neurite outgrowth, promoting tumour innervation and spinal cord repair.

Single-cell CRISPR screening is a powerful method for biological discovery. Such screens genetically perturb many genes in parallel and use single-cell RNA sequencing to assess the transcriptomic effects. Now, an in vivo protocol facilitates screens in mouse brain, using adeno-associated virus with transposon-based delivery of the CRISPR guide RNAs.

We provide scalable new tools, which include mosaic models and downstream multiplexing, for longitudinal single-cell profiling of brain organoids derived from multiple individuals. In addition, we benchmark computational methods for cell identity deconvolution and provide guidelines on how to use each multiplexing method for charting neurodevelopmental trajectories.