Growing Brains

We’d be nothing without our neurons. These specialised cells send and receive messages that instruct us to walk, talk and everything in between through a network in our body called the nervous system, which originates from our brain. Neurons themselves have their own tree-shaped structure. The main body of the neuron is like the crown of a tree, and houses its genetic information, whilst projecting outwards from the neuron’s body, like the trunk of a tree, is the axon. Measuring up to a metre in length, the axon’s primary function is to carry electrical signals away from the neuron body towards other neurons. This modern-art style image, captures the ultrastructure of a growing axon in a lab-grown miniature brain (organoid) using a technique called electron cryo-tomography. The axon (edged by dark blue) contains smaller structures such as microtubules (magenta) and actin filaments (orange) which provide structural support and carry the all-important signals.

Written by Katy Pallister

Katy Pallister

Writer

Katy is a freelance science educator, presenter, writer and producer based in London. She is a former Engagement and Events Officer at the MRC LMS.

• Image by Patrick C Hoffmann and Stefano L Giandomenico, and colleagues
• MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Francis Crick Avenue, Cambridge, UK
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, October 2021