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Fig. 1 | Neural Development

Fig. 1

From: Sympathetic tales: subdivisons of the autonomic nervous system and the impact of developmental studies

Fig. 1

Schematic illustration of the sympathetic neuron subtype differentiation in the mouse. BMP-signaling at the dorsal aorta elicits the expression of a group of transcription factors, including Phox2b, Hand2 and Gata3 [156,157,158, 221] that induce noradrenergic (Th, Dbh) and cholinergic genes (ChAT, VAChT), resulting in a high proportion of cells with a mixed noradrenergic/cholinergic phenotype at E10.5-E11.5 [143, 151]. At birth, the vast majority of postmitotic sympathetic neurons display noradrenergic properties; cholinergic characteristics are observed only in about 5% of sympathetic neurons [80, 151, 222]. Single-cell RNAseq of mature sympathetic neurons from P30 sympathetic ganglia allowed to define 2 subtypes of cholinergic sympathetic neurons (ACh1 and ACh2) (labeled by red cell bodies) and 5 subtypes of noradrenergic sympathetic neurons (NA1–5) (noradrenergic sympathetic neuron subtypes are labeled by different shades of blue) [80]. ACh1 and ACh2 correspond to previously identified sudomotor and periosteum-innervating neurons [85, 153]. NA2 and NA5 have been identified as nippleerector and piloerector sympathetic neurons. Sudomotor, NA2 and NA5 subtypes differentiate during postnatal development from noradrenergic neurons under the influence of target-derived differentiation signals [80, 87]. Vasoconstrictor, secretomotor, motility-regulating sympathetic neurons as well as other subtypes identified by physiological approaches are not yet characterized with respect to their gene expression signature and whether their differentiation is also controlled by target-derived signals

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