Id proteins synchronize stemness and anchorage to the niche of neural stem cells

Iavarone, Lasorella and colleagues develop genetic mouse models to study the roles of inhibitor of DNA-binding (Id) proteins in neural stem-cell maintenance. They show that Id proteins promote neural stem-cell adhesion to their niche by driving the transcriptional repression of Rap1GAP, thereby maintaining the activity of the Rap1 GTPase, a known regulator of integrin adhesion.