Key-Notes: basic concepts in Developmental Biology
5. lateral inhibition
It is a special form of induction occurring during development, involving an initially equivalent field of cells and resulting in the differentiation of individual cells in a regularly spaced pattern.
Lateral inhibition is involved in different developmental processes including the control of the choice of neuronal progenitors in Drosophila and vertebrates.
Fig.4 from Molecular Biology of the Cell. 3rd edition. Alberts B, Bray D, Lewis J, et al.
New York: Garland Science; 1994.
The figure on the left shows a group of cells in the undifferentiated state - they all have the potential to differentiate in the same way, and they all signal to each other to repress differentiation.
The figure in the center shows that as individual cells (in blue) begin to produce more inhibitor signal through random fluctuation begin to differentiate and suppress the differentiation of surrounding cells. This can be achieved not only by increasing the production of the inhibitory signal but also by decreasing the synthesis of its receptor. The spacing of the differentiated cells would be regulated by the range of the signal and the strength of its effect.