The development of the nervous system, from a simple epithelium to a complex brain with trillions of neurons, has been one of the classic problems in development and neurobiology. As our understanding increases, we are learning that a cascade of gene regulation and receptor activation is involved in specifying neuronal phenotypes. Preliminary evidence indicates that a series of neutral g-protein coupled receptors play an important role in the development of the central nervous system, and it is because of this that we set out to clone a variety of these receptors
