A new study shows a single amino acid change in a metabolic gene helps modern human brains develop more neurons than other mammals—and more than our extinct cousins, the Neanderthals.
We humans are proud of our big brains, which are responsible for our ability to plan ahead, communicate, and create. Inside our skulls, we pack, on average, 86 billion neurons—up to three times more than those of our primate cousins. For years, researchers have tried to figure out how we manage to develop so many brain cells.
The finding “is really a breakthrough,” says Brigitte Malgrange, a developmental neurobiologist at the University of Liège who was not involved in the study. “A single amino acid change isWhat makes our brain human has been the interest of neurobiologist Wieland Huttner at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics for years. In 2016, his team found that a mutation in the.
The researchers introduced both the human and archaic versions of the gene into mice, which typically don’t express either form during development. Mouse brains with the human version produced more basal radial glia, which in turn developed into more cortical neurons, than did mice with the archaic version.influenced the deep folding of the human brain, a geometry that allows us to squeeze extra neurons inside our skulls.
encodes an enzyme that helps cells produce fatty acids, which are important in cell division. The researchers suspect the extra fatty acids produced by the human version allow progenitor cells to grow and divide more, resulting in more neurons. The paper, with its multiple experiments, “is a tour de force,” says Alysson Muotri, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine. However, he wished the team had also explored changes in electrical activity in the modified brain organoids. He and his team
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