Can someone help me with nerve cells?

Question

if the nerve cells don't have centrosomes and so they can't

divide, then how are new nerve cells formed?

Answer 1

It's been a minute since I've had devolpmental biology, but I believe the simple answer is because nerve cells are formed from precursor stem cells. In the developing embryo are "pluripotent" (can become more than one kind of cell) neural stem cells, these cells give rise to all the types of cells in the nervous system and have the ability to divide. However, once the stem cell has adopted the fate of a neuron it becomes "unipotent" (meaning can only have one cell fate) and divides no more.

Wikipedia has a decent article on development of the nervous system, if you are interested. It's pretty complex though, but it's an amazingly complex process!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_deve...