Exploring Family Trees

The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of your brain, but creating this layered structure is a highly elaborate process during development. It requires early brain cell ancestors – called neural progenitor cells – to differentiate and create later generations of neurons and brain cells called glia. Integral to differentiation is ensuring that genes are switched on at the right time, but also that their genetic instructions are translated into an abundance of proteins to allow progenitors to become brain cells. The importance of these gene-protein networks and their timing during this process is known in mice, but remains unclear in humans. Researchers have now created a human brain organoid (pictured) that allows them to track progenitors (green) and neurons (magenta) simultaneously (all cell nuclei shown in white). This lab-grown ‘mini brain’ allows both cell types from different stages during development to be isolated and analysed, building a more detailed plan of this process.

Written by Sophie Arthur

Sophie Arthur

former Science Communications Officer MRC LMS

Formerly a stem cell biologist, Sophie has since moved into science communication working at the MRC LMS. She also writes an award winning science and education blog Soph talks science.

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• Image from work by Jaydeep Sidhaye and Philipp Trepte, and colleagues
• Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA), Vienna BioCenter (VBC), Vienna, Austria
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in eLife, March 2023