Mini Brain Organoids Upshift The Understanding Of Brain Diseases by Karishma Abhishek on February 23, 2021 at 1:00 AM
Three-dimensional human stem cell-derived Mini Brain organoids can mature in a manner that is strikingly similar to human brain development, following an internal clock that guides their maturation in synchrony with the timeline of human brain development, as per a study at UCLA and Stanford University, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience Organoids are small, self-organized 3D tissue cultures that are derived from stem cells. They are capable of being crafted to replicate much of the complexity of an organ or to express selected aspects of it like producing only certain types of cells.
Study reveals genetic signature of colibactin implicated in the development colorectal cancers
Escherichia coli bacteria are constitutive members of the human gut microbiota. However, some strains produce a genotoxin called colibactin, which is implicated in the development of colorectal cancer.
While it has been shown that colibactin leaves very specific changes in the DNA of host cells that can be detected in colorectal cancer cells, such cancers take many years to develop, leaving the actual process by which a normal cell becomes cancerous obscure.
The group of Thomas F. Meyer at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology in Berlin together with their collaborators have now been able to catch colibactin in the act of inducing genetic changes that are characteristic of colorectal cancer cells and cause a transformed phenotype - after only a few hours of infection.
Brain Development And The Neanderthal Mini-brain
The complete genome of the Neanderthal species was sequenced in 2013, from a phalanx (finger bone) Neanderthal fossil found in Siberia.
With this information in hand, the UC San Diego School of Medicine research team sought to isolate Neanderthal genes that were intimately involved in brain development processes. They eventually settled on NOVA1 as a candidate worth studying, and then set about designing an experiment that would prove their hypothesis that NOVA1 had a meaningful impact.
Using the characteristics of NOVA1’s genetic fingerprint as their guide, the researchers applied CRISPR gene-editing technology to malleable stem cells, in order to replicate Neanderthal brain cells in controlled laboratory conditions.
A team of scientists from the United States has recently conducted a study using pericyte-like cell-containing brain cortical organoids as an experimental model to investigate the impact of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection on the central nervous system.
In a study published in Nature Communications, cancer researchers at Kanazawa University identify mechanisms by which malignant tumor cells extend their.