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Biologists and physicists working at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot (Israel) are growing a laboratory model of the brain. Specialists observe the development of the main organ of the central nervous system and try to find out how convolutions and folds are formed in it.
About the study
In a higher educational institution and a multidisciplinary research institute in Israel, scientists find the causes of congenital pathological changes in the brain, in particular lissencephaly. This is an anomaly in the development of the brain, its main features are partial or complete underdevelopment of the furrows and convolutions.
Symptoms of lissencephaly:
- weakness in the muscles from birth;
- the child cannot suck, swallow food, saliva;
- convulsions are observed;
- delayed mental and physical development.
This pathology occurs in one in 30 babies. People with this diagnosis can live even up to 000 years, but the underdevelopment of the brain remains for life. Half of patients with lissencephaly remain in a vegetative state throughout their lives. Death can occur due to a number of complications that are caused by dysfunction of other organs and systems. A complication of the disease can be pneumonia, disruption of the heart and blood vessels.
In a test tube, biologists are growing a tiny brain that has wrinkles, folds and looks like a ripe walnut. The invented method of growing an organ from the cells and tissues of a healthy person makes it possible to observe biological and physical processes, as a result of which depressions and convolutions appear. This process begins on the 7-8th day of brain development.
Patterns found
In organelles, the following pattern was revealed: cells in the center contract, and their nuclei near the surface expand. In simple words, the inner side grows more slowly than the outer.
Scientists decided to try to grow organelles with a mutated genome, which negatively affects the development of the brain – only a few depressions and furrows appear. During the study, it became clear that ordinary non-mutated cells are 2 times stiffer, which is why they fold more easily and form wrinkles and convolutions.
Physicists and biologists are sure that growing a tiny brain in the laboratory will allow us to understand how other disorders associated with the development of the organ arise. They hope that their technique will allow them to study the emergence of epilepsy (a common chronic neurological disease that manifests itself in seizures and fainting), schizophrenia (a mental disorder due to which a person cannot distinguish reality from fiction) and microcephaly (mental deficiency associated with reduced brain mass).