What is Life – Growing BrainsScientists are able to grow human brain cells called organoids in the lab. They’re helping researchers discover how to treat diseases of the brain. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Zimmer: In one experiment with brain organoids, scientists wanted to understand how a virus called Zika can cause brain damage. Science writer Carl Zimmer is the author of the book “Life’s Edge.” Zimmer: Zika is transmitted by mosquitoes, and when pregnant women get infected, in some cases their babies will be born with severely underdeveloped brains. They’re missing the larger outer layers of the brain called the cerebral cortex. So scientists grew brain organoids in dishes and then exposed them to Zika viruses and they could actually see how the virus as it infected cells stopped them from taking the necessary steps to then build a cerebral cortex. The virus wasn’t killing the brain so much as arresting it.And that was a really important discovery, but what’s even more important is that you can then test out drugs that can stop this process, that can allow the brain to keep developing even in the presence of the ZIKA virus. so scientists have been finding some promising drugs by testing them out on these brain organoids.25What’s amazing about brain organoids is that you can actually build them from a skin cell. A scientist could just take a little skin sample from your hand and douse it with some chemicals and essentially reprogram it. They can guide its development and say okay we have this .. cell that can become almost anything in the human body. let’s turn it into neurons. Let’s make a brain. Our thanks to Carl Zimmer. We’ll hear more about organoids in our next program. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
What is Life - Growing Brains
Finding ways to defeat the Zika virus.
Air Date:05/11/2021
Scientist:
Transcript:
What is Life - Growing BrainsScientists are able to grow human brain cells called organoids in the lab. They're helping researchers discover how to treat diseases of the brain. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.Zimmer: In one experiment with brain organoids, scientists wanted to understand how a virus called Zika can cause brain damage. Science writer Carl Zimmer is the author of the book "Life's Edge." Zimmer: Zika is transmitted by mosquitoes, and when pregnant women get infected, in some cases their babies will be born with severely underdeveloped brains. They're missing the larger outer layers of the brain called the cerebral cortex. So scientists grew brain organoids in dishes and then exposed them to Zika viruses and they could actually see how the virus as it infected cells stopped them from taking the necessary steps to then build a cerebral cortex. The virus wasn't killing the brain so much as arresting it.And that was a really important discovery, but what's even more important is that you can then test out drugs that can stop this process, that can allow the brain to keep developing even in the presence of the ZIKA virus. so scientists have been finding some promising drugs by testing them out on these brain organoids.25What's amazing about brain organoids is that you can actually build them from a skin cell. A scientist could just take a little skin sample from your hand and douse it with some chemicals and essentially reprogram it. They can guide its development and say okay we have this .. cell that can become almost anything in the human body. let's turn it into neurons. Let's make a brain. Our thanks to Carl Zimmer. We'll hear more about organoids in our next program. I'm Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.