Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Current Events: Science

IT is a new school year, and with it come new intentions.  We are hoping to be more dedicated to our different journals this year.  With that in mind, I plan to write a current events post once per week.  So here goes:

Scientists have produced brain-like structures from stem cells.  These aren't actual functioning brains, but structures that resemble brains.  They were able to produce these "cerebral organoids" with both embryonic and IPS (developed from skin cells rather than embryos) stem cells.  The structures in some ways resemble the brain of a 9- to 10-week-old embryos, but are missing certain key components such as the cerebellum and hippocampus.  The researchers said they did not intend to try to reproduce fully functioning brains, but that these organoids are useful for studying the brain.

1 comment:

Katie said...

Well, this plan went right out the window. I don't even recall having made it.