What is Life – OrganoidsGrowing human brains in a laboratory used to be the stuff of science fiction, until now. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Zimmer: Scientists are learning how to grow what are in effect miniature human brains in dishes.Science writer Carl Zimmer is the author of the book “Life’s Edge.” The mini-brains are called organoids.Zimmer: What they can do is they can take a regular skin cell from a volunteer, put that in a dish, hit it with some chemicals, and that skin cell is eventually transformed into the kind of cell that you would find in the developing brain of a human embryo. And so this progenitor cell can grow and divide and divide and divide into neurons. Those neurons grow to hundreds of thousands – over 1 million cells that are all connected in a network, and they talk to each other. They send neurotransmitters to each other. They produce electrical activity that resembles brain waves. So now we have these things which of course are not full-blown brains, but are really remarkably similar in some respects to brains – so similar that scientists can use them to study how the human brain develops and how some disorders can arise during that development. So what was once a black box – the developing human brain – scientists can start to study it in a petri dish.Our thanks to Carl Zimmer. In future programs, we’ll hear how scientists are using organoids to find ways to treat brain diseases. Check out our website pulseplanet.com for some exciting news. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
What is Life - Organoids
Growing human brains in a laboratory used to be the stuff of science fiction, until now.
Air Date:05/10/2021
Scientist:
Transcript:
What is Life - OrganoidsGrowing human brains in a laboratory used to be the stuff of science fiction, until now. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Zimmer: Scientists are learning how to grow what are in effect miniature human brains in dishes.Science writer Carl Zimmer is the author of the book "Life's Edge." The mini-brains are called organoids.Zimmer: What they can do is they can take a regular skin cell from a volunteer, put that in a dish, hit it with some chemicals, and that skin cell is eventually transformed into the kind of cell that you would find in the developing brain of a human embryo. And so this progenitor cell can grow and divide and divide and divide into neurons. Those neurons grow to hundreds of thousands - over 1 million cells that are all connected in a network, and they talk to each other. They send neurotransmitters to each other. They produce electrical activity that resembles brain waves. So now we have these things which of course are not full-blown brains, but are really remarkably similar in some respects to brains - so similar that scientists can use them to study how the human brain develops and how some disorders can arise during that development. So what was once a black box - the developing human brain - scientists can start to study it in a petri dish.Our thanks to Carl Zimmer. In future programs, we'll hear how scientists are using organoids to find ways to treat brain diseases. Check out our website pulseplanet.com for some exciting news. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.