Leech neurogenesis. I. Positional commitment of neural precursor cells

This paper reports analyses of the differentiation and distribution of identified peripheral neurons and central 5-HT-containing neurons in embryos of the glossiphoniid leech Theromyzon rude that have been deprived of one of the bilaterally paired major ectodermal cell lines called the n bandlets. Cells descended from a lone surviving n bandlet were abnormally distributed across both sides of the ventral midline. Nevertheless, they produced the complement of identified neurons that they would have produced in a normal embryo. Neurons produced by cells that crossed the midline occupied the normal positions of their absent homologs, as demonstrated by morphometric analysis of normal and n-bandlet-deprived ganglia. Ablations of ectodermal cell lines other than the n bandlets (o and p, or q) allowed the formation of normal distributions of neurons descended from the n bandlets. These results are interpreted as showing that neural precursor cells are committed to occupy particular positions before reaching those positions and probably use positional cues of predominantly nonectodermal origin to recognize those positions. Together, the results reported here and in the accompanying paper (S. Torrence, M. Law, and D. Stuart, 1989, Dev. Biol. 136, 40-60) suggest that ectodermal cells that are committed to give rise to specific neurons use cues provided by the mesoderm to find positions appropriate to their fates.