Cambridge scientists create pea-sized brain that can move muscles

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Spotted:  A group of Cambridge scientists have created a small brain that can develop “tendrils” to connect and control muscles. This is a first for a lab-grown brain, according to the university.

Miniature brains grown in a petri dish (known as a cerebral organoid) are created using stem cells submerged in a vitamin-rich gel. The process allows scientists to explore some aspects of brain development– but not all. The miniature brains would die before they could develop beyond a set point because the gel cut off the oxygen supply.

This limited how much scientists could learn. They could, for instance, study how stem cells infected with microcephaly developed into a smaller brain mass. But there was not enough development to study more sophisticated processes, like the connections with the nervous system.

The Cambridge group figured out how to take a slice of the miniature brain and position it so it was both absorbing the gel in the petri dish and receiving oxygen. This allowed the miniature brain to develop for a full year, providing new insights into how the human brain is formed. Specifically, it gave the brain enough time to develop “tendrils” of neurons that linked up with a 1mm-long piece of spinal cord and back muscle (taken from a mouse embryo) in the petri dish. The brain then sent out electrical impulses, causing the muscles to twitch. The process mimicked how motor neurons work in the human body.

Takeaway: The miniature brain is about the size of a pea and is roughly the same level of sophistication as a human foetal brain at 12-16 weeks of pregnancy. It is not a human brain, however, cautioned the lead scientist in the group, Madeleine Lancaster. While it develops like a human brain, “the bits are jumbled, like a toddler trying to build a space craft. The solar panels might be backwards, some equipment might be upside down”. This breakthrough is important because it could lead to better understanding of how the human brain and nervous system work. For instance, the team had already done experiments using the miniature brains to study the impact of microcephaly. Now scientists will be able to expand their work to study how neuron connections are made as the brain and nervous system develop. This could help them understand how diseases and mutant genes affect these systems — making it easier to understand how illnesses like epilepsy and schizophrenia affect the brain.

Website: www.mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk
Contact: [email protected]

Published in: March 2019

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