The thalamus is a central brain region that plays a crucial role in distributing incoming sensory information to appropriate regions of the cortex. The thalamus develops in the posterior part of the embryonic forebrain, where early cell fate decisions are controlled by a local signaling center – the mid-diencephalic organizer – which forms at the boundary between prospective prethalamus and thalamus. In this review we discuss recent observations of early thalamic development in zebrafish, chick, and mouse embryos, that reveal a conserved set of interactions between homeodomain transcription factors. These interactions position the organizer along the neuraxis. The most prominent of the organizer's signals, Sonic hedgehog, is necessary for conferring regional identity on the prethalamus and thalamus and for patterning their differentiation.

中文翻译：

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建造新房：丘脑的发育

丘脑是一个中央大脑区域，在将传入的感觉信息分配到皮层的适当区域方面起着至关重要的作用。丘脑在胚胎前脑的后部发育，在那里早期细胞命运的决定由一个局部信号中心控制——中间脑组织者——形成于预期的前丘脑和丘脑之间的边界。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了最近对斑马鱼、小鸡和小鼠胚胎早期丘脑发育的观察，这些观察揭示了同源域转录因子之间的一组保守的相互作用。这些相互作用使组织者沿着神经轴定位。组织者信号中最突出的信号是刺猬索尼克，对于赋予前丘脑和丘脑区域特征以及形成它们的分化模式是必要的。