
We're growing brains outside of the body - Cozumel
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20161004-were-developing-brains-outside-of-the-body
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sundarurfriend
The research is very interesting, but I find the article quite annoying and
difficult to get through. It feels badly organized, and overall sounds more
like an upstart blogger trying to sound like a fancy NYT (or BBC) journalist -
and failing at it.

A few choice quotes to function as a poor man's tldr:

* Madeleine Lancaster has 300 brains growing in her [...] brand new molecular biology lab in Cambridge

* to make [a brain] you could start with any cell type – be it nose, liver, or toenail. [...] next you’ll need to turn your cells into [stem cells].

* Eventually each stem cell will begin to specialise, turning the uniform balls into a jumble of different cell types. Among them will be brain cells.

* As the cells begin to starve, most of them will die off, leaving only the brain cells behind. “They are really robust – I don’t think anyone knows why,” she says.

* At the moment, Lancaster’s brains aren’t thought to be able to think. [...] "The neurons are working but they aren’t really organised relative to one another,” she says.

* the team has been taking individual genes involved in brain development and replacing them with the chimpanzee version – then using these cells to make hybrid chimp-human brains. As they develop, the role of the gene often becomes clear;

* Elsewhere, the organoids are being used to study uniquely human diseases, from autism to schizophrenia.

