Foxn4 is a temporal identity factor conferring mid/late-early retinal competence and involved in retinal synaptogenesis
Shuting Liu, Xiaoning Liu, Shengguo Li, Xiuting Huang, Haohua Qian, Kangxin Jin, Mengqing Xiang
Abstract
Significance Organogenesis, an evolutionarily refined process which is so complicated, delicate, yet replicable, is all about time and space. Only until recently have scientists realized that the temporal identity of Drosophila neuroblasts is controlled by cascades of temporal transcription factors (tTFs), but the temporal regulation mechanism is poorly understood in vertebrates. We show that Foxn4 functions as a tTF to confer mammalian retinal progenitors (RPCs) with the competence to generate mid/late-early cell types while suppressing the immediate-early cell type. Our data thus identify a missing member of the tTF cascade that controls RPC temporal identities to ensure the generation of proper retinal neuronal diversity, and provide an important insight for understanding how cell-fate transitions are guided during vertebrate organogenesis.