ARHGAP11A maintains cortical progenitor identity through RHOA-ROCK signaling during human brain development
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Mammalian brain development involves coordinated progenitor amplification, migration, and differentiation. Apical progenitors (APs) establish the ventricular zone (VZ) and are key determinants of brain size and complexity. Rho-family guanosine triphosphatases (Rho-GTPases) regulate cytoskeletal dynamics and AP behavior, but how specific Rho GTPase-activating proteins (Rho-GAPs) influence progenitor identity and VZ architecture remains unclear. Using human forebrain organoids, we investigate the function of the Rho GAP ARHGAP11A in human corticogenesis. CRISPR-Cas9-mediated ARHGAP11A knockout reveals its essential role in maintaining VZ integrity. Loss of ARHGAP11A impairs neuroepithelial organization and randomizes mitotic cleavage-plane orientation via the RHOA-ROCK-actin axis. This leads to premature AP delamination, AP depletion, and reduced cell density and glial numbers. Pharmacological inhibition of RHOA or ROCK rescues these defects, highlighting ARHGAP11A's role in cytoskeletal remodeling to maintain cortical progenitors. Our findings establish ARHGAP11A as a critical regulator of AP identity and VZ integrity, with broad implications for human corticogenesis.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".