Studies of CNS development in Drosophila have traditionally focused on the trunk CNS, about which a considerable amount is known,particularly regarding the role of the proneural genes in specifying neural stem cells called neuroblasts (NB). By comparison, relatively little is known about the CNS in the fly brain. This gap in knowledge has now been tackled by Gerhard Technau and co-workers, who have produced three papers in this issue(see p. 3589, p. 3607 and p. 3621) that provide new insights into the developing fly brain – its patterning and segmentation – and into the formation and specification of brain NBs. Their first paper details a comprehensive survey of early brain development,up to the stage when all brain NBs have formed. By using 4D microscopy, they have discovered various modes of NB formation that can be related to the presence of specific mitotic domains in the procephalic neuroectoderm (PN),from...

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