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Fig. 2. Inhibitory Notch signaling restricts cell fates. (A) A proposed dynamic of Notch signaling among a group of equipotent cells. Initially, cells that share a special cell fate potential (gray) both send and receive Notch signals, known as `mutual' inhibitory Notch signaling. Later, one cell commits to the specialized fate (black) and inhibits surrounding cells (white) from adopting this fate, a situation known as `lateral' inhibitory Notch signaling. (B) The failure of Notch signaling results in extra cells adopting the special cell fate, while excessive Notch signaling prevents the differentiation of these cells. (C,D) Notch signaling inhibits neurogenesis in the Drosophila embryo. (C) A wild-type embryo stained for the neural marker ELAV (red). (D) An embryo that completely lacks Su(H), the fly CSL transcription factor, displays a strong excess of neurons - the classic `neurogenic' phenotype. (E,F) Notch signaling inhibits neurogenesis in Xenopus (images courtesy of Elise Lamar). Staining for a neural form of tubulin (purple) reveals neuronal differentiation. (E) The lower half of this embryo expresses constitutively active Notch^intra, which inhibits neuronal differentiation [compare the number of neurons in the bracketed region in wild type (top) with the starred region in the mutant tissue (bottom)]. (F) The lower half of this embryo expresses an inhibitor of the Notch co-activator complex (dominant negative form of Mastermind). This leads to a failure of Notch signaling and a strong neurogenic phenotype (star).

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