Brain Genes Identified

These neurons (coloured green) were derived from mouse embryonic stem cells as part of a genome-wide screening approach to find genes necessary for neuronal development. The gene editing technique, CRISPR, was used to knock-out some 20,000 individual genes in the stem cells, allowing the researchers to see, one-by-one, which disrupted genes impaired the neuronal fate. The scientists identified over 300 such genes, many of which were not previously known to be involved in neuronal development. A number of the new candidate genes were further investigated in mouse models, where their disruption was shown to cause microcephaly (unusually small brain size) and other neurological abnormalities. Furthermore, the importance of at least one of these genes (called PEDS1) for human brain development was also confirmed with the discovery of its mutation in two unrelated children with severe neuro-developmental issues and microcephaly.

Written by Ruth Williams

Ruth Williams

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Ruth is a freelance science journalist based in the US. She's a regular correspondent for The Scientist, and her work has appeared in The Lancet, Nature, Scientific American Mind, BBC Focus and elsewhere. Twitter @rooph

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• Image by Galya Monderer-Rothkoff, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, from work by Alana Amelan, Stephan Collins & Nadirah Damseh, et al
• INSERM Unit 1231, Université de Bourgogne-Europe, Dijon, France & Department of Genetics, The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
• Image originally published with no restrictions – Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Research published in Nature Neuroscience, January 2026