December 18, 2023
3 min learn
A number of analysis groups have created an atlas of the mouse mind. The map, which has greater than 5,300 cell clusters, ought to assist to enhance the therapy of mind illnesses
What number of completely different cell clusters are within the mind of a mouse? The place are they positioned, and what are their capabilities? A big worldwide crew of researchers has tackled this enormously troublesome puzzle and offered a whole cell atlas of the mouse mind.
Consultants on the Mind Analysis via Advancing Progressive Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative Cell Census Community) documented greater than 5,300 completely different cell clusters, as they’ve reported in a complete of 10 papers published in Nature. Because it seems, cell clusters are distributed in particular areas of the mind and differ relying on their location. This complicated construction of the mammalian mind is outwardly the results of an extended evolutionary course of. Hongkui Zeng, director of the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle and a co-author of a number of of the research, is convinced that the brand new mind map will permit researchers to lastly see how the mind is organized.
For the scientists, the selection of the mind of the home mouse (Mus musculus) is clear: The rodent is the mannequin organism par excellence in biology and medication. It furnishes one of the best ways to create an exemplary atlas of a mammalian mind.
The researchers employed varied analytic strategies for his or her research, together with completely different single-cell analyses. These can be utilized to analyze the genetic exercise of mind cells. Amongst different issues, the intention was to seek out out which messenger RNAs (mRNAs) the mouse mind cells produced. Based mostly on the varied RNA snippets, the scientists have been then capable of deduce what number of completely different cell clusters there are in that mind as a result of every of them produces a attribute signature of mRNA molecules.
On the identical time, the crew additionally decided the spatial place of the cells within the mind. That is what makes this mammoth mission so particular: all of the researchers concerned not solely mapped “the entire mouse brain” for the primary time but additionally did so utilizing spatial transcriptomics, permitting “cell types to be placed in their native tissue context,” wrote neurologist Maria Antonietta Tosches of Columbia College in an accompanying commentary in Nature.
The researchers sequenced a number of million cells and picked up their location knowledge within the rodent mind. The crew then divided the mind cells into 4 ranges comprising a complete of 5,322 clusters. The consultants additionally mapped how the person clusters work together with each other and are in touch with the assistance of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides.
The ten research produced a plethora of outcomes. Deep throughout the mind—within the areas of the hypothalamus, midbrain and hindbrain—the vary of cell sorts is way larger than within the evolutionarily youthful cerebral cortex. “These findings point out that completely different guidelines govern neuronal variety throughout the mind, maybe as a result of every area developed beneath completely different constraints,” Tosches explained in the Nature commentary. The difference could be linked to the fact that the parts of the brain below the cortex have changed less over the course of evolution than the upper parts—possibly because the lower parts control more of the body’s basic functions.
The results of the new studies should also support existing plans to map the human brain. One aim of all this research is to improve the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases and neurological disorders. It is known, for example, that many diseases develop in certain regions of the brain—possibly because specific cell types have changed. According to Zeng, a brain atlas could be used to develop gene therapies or drugs to directly target cells and thus reduce medications’ side effects.
The researchers also hope that their atlas will stimulate numerous other research projects. And finding out the function of the cells and their role in disease may keep the team busy for the next 20 years.
This text initially appeared in Spektrum der Wissenschaft and was reproduced with permission.
