Exclusive: Neanderthal ‘minibrains’ grown in dish
By Jon CohenJun. 20, 2018 , 12:35 PM
Until now, researchers wanting to understand the Neanderthal brain and how it differed from our own had to study a void. The best insights into the neurology of our mysterious, extinct relatives came from analyzing the shape and volume of the spaces inside their fossilized skulls.
But a recent marriage of three hot fields—ancient DNA, the genome editor CRISPR, and "organoids" built from stem cells—offers a provocative, if very preliminary, new option. At least two research teams are engineering stem cells to include Neanderthal genes and growing them into "minibrains" that reflect the influence of that ancient DNA.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/exclusive-neanderthal-minibrains-grown-dish
