The development of the brain mapped down to the smallest detail

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Published August 2, 2021 at 08.24

Domestic. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have produced a detailed molecular atlas of the brain's fetal development. The study, which is published in Nature, is based on so-called single-cell technology and is performed on mice. In this way, researchers have identified almost 800 different cells that are active during fetal development – many times more than previously known.

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– The development of the brain has been well described before and the main cell types are known. The new thing about our atlas is the high resolution and richness of detail, says Sten Linnarsson, research leader and professor at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics, Karolinska Institutet, in a post.

In their work, the researchers followed brain development in mice from day seven, when the predisposition to the brain has just formed, to the end of pregnancy on day 18. Using single-cell technology – single-cell technology – they were able to map the composition of the brain in detail during fetal development: what cell types there are, how many cells of each type and how this changes in the various stages of development.

The researchers also studied the activity of genes in each individual cell and classified cells based on these activity patterns.

The result is a molecular atlas that shows exactly how all cells in the brain develop from the early embryo. For example, one can see how early nerve stem cells first increase and then decrease in number, to be replaced by transitional forms in several waves that eventually mature into finished nerve cells.

The researchers also show how early stem cell lines branch and give rise to several different types of mature cells, much like a family tree.

The next step in work is to create atlases over the human brain, both in adults and during fetal development.

– Atlases like this are made of great importance for research on the brain, both to understand the function of the brain and its diseases. The cells are the body's basic building blocks and the body's diseases are always expressed in specific cells. Genes that cause severe diseases are found in all the body's cells, but they only cause disease in specific cells in the brain, says Sten Linnarsson.