Principles of neural stem cell lineage progression: from cerebral cortex

How to generate a brain of correct size and with appropriate cell-type diversity during development is a major question in Neuroscience. In the developing neocortex, radial glial pro-genitor (RGP) cells are the main neural stem cells that produce cortical excitatory projection neurons, glial cells, and establish the prospective postnatal stem cell niche in the lateral ventri-cles. RGPs follow a tightly orchestrated developmental pro-gram that when disrupted can result in severe cortical malformations such as microcephaly and megalencephaly. The precise cellular and molecular mechanisms instructing faithful RGP lineage progression are however not well under-stood. This review will summarize recent conceptual advances that contribute to our understanding of the general principles of RGP lineage progression.