Coevolution of radial glial cells and the cerebral cortex

Radial glia cells play fundamental roles in the development of the cerebral cortex, acting both as the primary stem and progenitor cells, as well as the guides for neuronal migration and lamination. These critical functions of radial glia cells in cortical development have been discovered mostly during the last 15 years and, more recently, seminal studies have demonstrated the existence of a remarkable diversity of additional cortical progenitor cell types, including a variety of basal radial glia cells with key roles in cortical expansion and folding, both in ontogeny and phylogeny. In this review, we summarize the main cellular and molecular mechanisms known to be involved in cerebral cortex development in mouse, as the currently preferred animal model, and then compare these with known mechanisms in other vertebrates, both mammal and nonmammal, including human. This allows us to present a global picture of how radial glia cells and the cerebral cortex seem to have coevolved, from reptiles to primates, leading to the remarkable diversity of vertebrate cortical phenotypes. GLIA 2015;63:1303–1319