“Neur”al brain wave: Coordinating epithelial-to-neural stem cell transition in the fly optic lobe

In the Drosophila larval optic lobe, the generation of neural stem cells involves an epithelial-to-mesenchymal–like transition of a continuous stripe of cells that sweeps across the neuroepithelium, but the dynamics at cell and tissue level were unknown until now. In this issue, Shard et al. (2020. J. Cell Biol. https://doi.org/10.1083/jcb.202005035) identify that Neuralized controls a partial epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition through regulation of the apical Crumbs complex and through the coordination of cell behaviors such as apical constriction and cell alignment.