Fate and freedom in the developing mammalian brain

While the diversity of neurons in the adult mammalian brain is staggering, these cells emerge from a seemingly limited set of progenitors during development. This begs the question of how complexity emerges from a finite number of elements during dynamic biological processes. Here, I will discuss recent work from my laboratory addressing relationships between genetic diversity and connectivity in single-cell types, and how progenitor diversity may constrain adult brain cellular states during normal and abnormal brain development.