The study suggests that the different brain regions arise from separate kinds of embryonic cells known as progenitors.<\/p>\n
They found one progenitor cell type leads to the development of the forebrain and midbrain, while another goes on a totally different path to form the hindbrain.<\/p>\n
The scientists made their initial discovery by analyzing the way mouse brains developed from the very early embryonic stage known as gastrulation<\/a>.<\/p>\n Then, they confirmed that human pluripotent stem cells<\/a> also follow these same paths, depending on the signals they receive.<\/p>\n In a scientific first, they successfully encouraged the human stem cells to develop into hindbrain motor neurons, complete with electrical activity and proteins characteristic of these cells.<\/p>\n The progenitor cells that create the fore- and midbrain regions produce a specific protein using a gene called Otx2, while the soon-to-be hindbrain cells express a gene called Gbx2. <\/p>\n Both kinds of progenitor cells form the basis for the complete organ that is our brain, but their roles are not interchangeable.<\/p>\n The way their DNA is packaged is fundamentally different too, with totally distinct chromatin ‘landscapes’.<\/p>\n This could explain why experiments to grow the cells that make up the hindbrain in the laboratory have often failed: They may have been using the wrong building blocks, those fated to become forebrain tissue.<\/p>\n “In stem cell<\/a> biology, people are always fixated with creating the end cell type, like the neuron\u2026 But it’s important to begin at the earliest stages of embryonic development,” says<\/a> developmental biologist Rayyan Jokhai, who is co-first author with his colleague Carolyn Dundes on the paper.<\/p>\n “Our careful attention to that early time point allowed us to find this fundamental split in brain development,” Jokhai adds<\/a>.<\/p>\n This element of the research will probably accelerate research investigating diseases that affect the brainstem, hitting at our bodies’ most basic functions.<\/p>\n Beyond the medical research implications, the discovery also raises a lot of questions about the evolutionary history of animal brains.<\/p>\n “Our research suggests that evolution took two existing neural systems and pushed them together spatially,” says<\/a> developmental biologist Kyle Loh, whose lab hosted the research. <\/p>\n “Having the brain as one organ would probably be more efficient, but we rely on this primordial way to make the brain as two separate pieces.”<\/p>\n “I was surprised at our findings because the word ‘brain’ implies a contiguous organ that likely has a singular origin,” Jokhai says<\/a>. <\/p>\n “But even 500 million years ago, there were these separate neural systems, which now almost operate as one, which is very cool.”<\/p>\n Those statements need a bit of extra context: Loh and Jokhai don’t mean that the neural systems were necessarily two separate organs to start with. <\/p>\n What they are describing is a bit of evolutionary inference, based on how the brains of modern animals develop in gastrulation<\/a>. <\/p>\n The researchers found this composite brain system (with the two progenitor cell types co-operating to form a complete organ) was present in the gastrulation stage of modern mouse, macaque, chicken, zebrafish, and acorn worm embryos. <\/p>\n All of these animals share a common ancestor in the evolutionary tree of life, and scientists estimate that they all diverged from that singular node around 550 million years ago.<\/p>\n Related: Scientists Grew Human Brain Cells Inside Mice \u2013 And They Wired Into The Mouse Nervous System<\/a><\/p>\n The study suggests animal brains \u2013 including our own \u2013 have been following this two-part blueprint for hundreds of millions of years.<\/p>\n But the evidence so far cannot tell us whether those two parts actually evolved independently: that’s a question for future research.<\/p>\n The research was published in Nature Neuroscience<\/a>.<\/p>\n This article was fact-checked by Peter Dockrill<\/a> and edited by Peter Dockrill<\/a>. While we pride ourselves on our process, we are only human. If you spot a mistake, please let us know<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The brain is an immeasurably complex organ, and we’re only just scratching the surface of how it even…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":619886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[85,46,371,141],"class_list":["post-619885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-msft-content","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=619885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/619885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/619886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=619885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=619885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=619885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Screenshot-2026-09-18-at-14.59.47.png\")
Human pluripotent stem cells were differentiated into either anterior (aNE) or posterior (pNE) neural ectoderm-like cells within 2 days. pNE was fluorescently labeled, and then aNE (uncolored) and pNE (dye-labeled) were mixed. Co-cultures were treated with either forebrain-, midbrain-, or hindbrain-inducing signals for two additional days, before immunostaining. (Jokhai et al., Nature Neuroscience, 2026)<\/p>\n![\"Subscribe](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789727411_405_FOMO-1200x628-_Dont-miss-the-next-breakthrough_-cosmic-colourful-642x336.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n