The people behind the papers – Laura Lahti and Thomas Perlmann

Midbrain dopamine (mDA) neuron degeneration is a major cause of Parkinson's disease, so understanding the mechanisms underpinning mDA neuron production could help inform future treatments. A new paper in Development identifies key transcription factors that regulate the timing of cell cycle exit in mDA progenitors. The study also identifies a population of ependymal cells that exhibit progenitor potential. To learn more about the story behind the paper, we caught up with first author Laura Lahti and corresponding author Thomas Perlmann, Professor in Molecular Developmental Biology at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden.