In contrast to all other cell types of this taxon, which are neural-crest derived, OPCs are derived from the neural tube and assumed to be produced by the same progenitors as astrocytes and neurons. Interestingly, however, OPCs share many features of neural crest cells: they require the expression of the two key transcription factors that specify neural crest (Sox10 and Sox9) (Takada et al., 2010), they are highly migratory, and they do not respect developmental borders in the brain. These observations, and the finding that OPCs align molecularly with all the neural-crest-derived glia, suggest that they are a neural-crest-like type of glia and support the view that they have a common evolutionary origin with Schwann cells (Kastriti and Adameyko, 2017). Although they are not derived from the physical neural crest, they appear to use similar regulatory mechanisms as neural-crest-derived cells. We therefore named this taxon “neural-crest-like glia.”
