The mode of Notch signaling has been studied in many cellular contexts (Bray, 1998). The classical lateral inhibition is demonstrated in Drosophila neuroblast delamination ( Bourouis et al., 1989) and vertebrate primary neurogenesis at the neural plate stage ( Chitnis et al.,

1995). In both cases, cells of distinct fates are selected from a field of equi-potent cells. In addition to lateral inhibition, Notch signaling can also act in a binary mode to influence lineage decisions. Studies in Drosophila have established an important role of Numb in antagonizing Notch selleck signaling during neuroblast lineage decisions; however, the source of Notch ligand (i.e., whether it is from intralineage or elsewhere) is not known. The mode of Notch signaling during active neurogenesis in the vertebrate neural tube has not been resolved. The present study, to our knowledge, is the first to combine in vivo time-lapse imaging and lineage-restricted genetic mosaic analysis to show that asymmetrically dividing radial glial progenitors in the developing zebrafish INCB28060 brain segregate self-renewal and differentiation through intralineage Notch signaling. It is worth pointing out that our present

study is focused on neural progenitor cells that undergo asymmetric divisions. It remains to be determined whether and how Notch signaling operates in lineages that undergo symmetric divisions or at different stages of neural tube development, and whether intralineage Notch signaling occurs in asymmetrically dividing progenitors of other vertebrate systems. Interestingly, a recent study (Shitamukai et al., 2011) reveals that clonal Notch signaling is essential for the outer VZ progenitors to self-renew in the developing mouse neocortex, which indicates

that intralineage Notch signaling may be a shared mechanism for maintaining neural progenitor self-renewal in vertebrates. In Drosophila neural progenitors, multiple cell Thymidine kinase fate determinants including Brat ( Betschinger et al., 2006), Neuralized ( Le Borgne and Schweisguth, 2003), Numb ( Rhyu et al., 1994), and Prospero ( Hirata et al., 1995, Knoblich et al., 1995 and Spana and Doe, 1995) are asymmetrically localized in mitotic progenitors and unequally inherited by the two daughter cells. Importantly, the asymmetric inheritance of Numb biases Notch in Drosophila neuroblast lineages ( Guo et al., 1996). However, it is not known whether Numb has a role in regulating Notch signaling in the vertebrate brain. Studies have shown polarized distribution of Numb in the basolateral domain of mitotic neural progenitors in both zebrafish and mice and at the adherens junctions of mammalian interphase radial glia ( Rasin et al., 2007 and Reugels et al., 2006). Our results establish Mib as a cell fate determinant that is unequally inherited by the apical daughter of asymmetric division. We further show that the intrinsic polarity regulator Par-3 is required to segregate Mib to the apical daughter.