Researchers around the world are growing brainlike organs to unravel how people evolved to think. Discover more from our latest article.
The secrets behind the evolution of the human mind might lie within the thousands of tiny “brains” called organoids that neuroscientist Alysson Muotri has grown in his laboratory at the University of California, San Diego, since 2011.
These lab marvels emerged from a concept first publicized in 2008 by Yoshiki Sasai of the private research foundation RIKEN, based in Tokyo. Sasai suspended cells in a liquid nutrient solution that fostered their growth into three-dimensional cultures. This type of cell proliferation more closely replicates the body’s natural processes than typical cell cultures grown on flat petri dishes. In Muotri’s case, he uses chemicals to transform stem cells into neurons.
Because the Neanderthal NOVA1’s genetic code differs from the modern human’s by a single letter, it’s fairly simple to edit the gene inside stem cells before they become neurons and grow into organoids. “We were looking for the low-hanging fruit,” says Muotri, “and NOVA1 checked all the marks.” Early human relatives retained an apelike brain structure until around 1.5 million years ago, when expanded frontal and parietal lobes emerged.
Pinning down when the crucial mutations to the NOVA1 gene occurred, along with the timing of the gene behind the ZEB2 protein, remains difficult. But the fossil record provides direct evidence of when human ancestors’ brains began to expand. Paleoanthropologists Christoph Zollikofer and Marcia Ponce de León of the University of Zurich in Switzerland led a comprehensive study, published inin April 2021, of the insides of fossil hominin skulls.
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