Special issue on lineage specification, co-edited with Seth Blackshaw
Christian Mayer and Seth Blackshaw co-edited the special issue Lineage Specification in Development of Current Opinion in Genetics & Development (Developmental Mechanisms, Patterning and Evolution, 2026). Its 15 reviews explore how cells acquire their identities, how lineages build tissue complexity during development, and how new structures and cell types arise in evolution.
Working with Seth was a pleasure, and we thank all the contributing authors for sharing their expertise and thoughtful perspectives through their reviews.
The collection is accompanied by our editorial overview, Specifying cell identity, shaping tissue diversity.
Read the full text via Elsevier (author link; free access may be time-limited) · DOI
The 15 reviews in this issue
- Autosomal random monoallelic expression in development and disease — Harshada Jadhav, Srimonta Gayen
- What’s in a niche? Elucidating the role of the ECM in cell fate commitment — Atoosa Amel, Anna Alemany
- Conservation of retinal direction-selective circuits across vertebrate species — Allison T. Reed, Alex L. Kolodkin, Karina Chaudhari, Robert J. Johnston
- Temporal trajectories underlying adult neuronal diversity — Tulsi Patel
- Lineage tracing in human cortical development — Guohua Yuan, Marilyn Steyert, Tomasz J. Nowakowski
- Cis-regulatory strategies in developmental patterning — Jack P. C. Williams, M. Joaquina Delás
- GABAergic neuron fate specification and lineage allocation: from development to disorder — Elena Dvoretskova, Christian Mayer
- Reassessing forebrain organization: recent evidence challenges the prosomere model — Elsie Place, Elizabeth Manning, Seth Blackshaw, Marysia Placzek
- Epigenetic regulation of cell fate determination in cortical development — Jeong-Eun Lee, Philipp Abe, Mareike Albert
- Evolutionary specializations in primate cortical development — Jiamiao Yuan, Xuerui Zeng, Jichao Yin, Bing Su
- Gliogenesis in the mammalian cerebral cortex — Parama Mitra, Shubha Tole
- The emergence of neurogenic lineage motifs in building the vertebrate retina — Mei Wang, Jie He
- Clonal analysis for understanding fate biases in developing embryos — Sergey Isaev, Igor Adameyko
- Oscillatory gene expression in cell differentiation and tissue patterning — Hiromi Shimojo, Ryoichiro Kageyama
- Convergent re-evolution of CNS structures: focus on the fovea — Susana da Silva