@invitroveritas
I'm like the full-sized version of an organ-on-a-chip. Brain organoids, veganism, feminism, pragmatic progressivism, sometimes grad school & parenting. Critics rave: "The least annoying bad takes I've seen all week"
But organoid circuits don't map one-to-one onto brain circuits, & we can't know if the effects of ASD-linked perturbations are the same as in brains.
Messaging & grants should reflect this, to ensure this basic neurodev research doesn't take funding meant for the growing needs of the ASD community
Do different neuron types have to appear at specific times relative to each other, or can they wait for their circuit partners if need be? Does spliceosome regulation have a big role during neurogenesis?
If these processes are affected in brain models with ASD-like perturbations, it's a good clue!
imho the point of trying to recapitulate aspects of ASD in organoids isn't to "cure" ASD, or even to understand ASD.
The point is that autistic brains work differently in diverse ways, such that imitating the perturbations associated with ASDs can help identify key events in human neurodevelopment.
Very neat concept—and a great illustration of the experimental & moral case for brain organoids.
There's just no reason why in 2024, characterizing the effects of defined mechanical forces on living neural tissue should require guesstimating how hard to hit a rat on the head with a steel implement
thank you!!
Super cool, I might try that recipe! But I also think there's a huge unexplored space of fermented coagulated plant milks, beyond trying to replicate existing dairy cheeses
I like the Daiya-style emulsified stuff, but real cheesemaking w plant milks is a big opportunity.
Imagine being sent to the Neolithic to reinvent cheesemaking, knowing all the modern techniques—inoculation, brining, climate-controlled caves. That's where we are for cashew, macadamia, & pea milk!
The rest of us are missing out on tofu fermentation foodways that rival any dairy cheesemaking tradition: smelly tofu, pickled tofu, creamy tofu, squeaky tofu, mushy tofu!
(The good folks at the Soyinfo center have all the details:
soyinfocenter.com/pdf/149/ToFe...) 2/3
Many vegan cheeses are tasty, but almost none are actually "cheeses": (plant) milk solids that have been curdled, pressed, & ripened.
Closest common approximation of actual vegan cheese is soy cheese, ie tofu—outside Asia, mostly only available as a plain "fresh cheese" 1/3
Thanks! It's 16"x20", I might have gone a little smaller but the bark is delicate when cut too thin and I was using a dull blade when I started. A fresh xacto blade definitely helps with finer details
@neurowoodworks.bsky.social, what do you think?
Collage representing coronal sections of the embryonic human brain at gestational week 11 and five coronal sections of the embryonic mouse brain at gestational day 12. Sections are made out of paper, grey, and mountain paper birch bark (Betula papyrifera, B. alleghaniensis, and B. cordifolia) and mounted in a grey frame in "floating" style, pressed in place between two panes of glass allowing a dark background to be seen behind the collage.
Collage representing coronal sections of the embryonic human brain at gestational week 11 and five coronal sections of the embryonic mouse brain at gestational day 12. Sections are made out of paper, grey, and mountain paper birch bark (Betula papyrifera, B. alleghaniensis, and B. cordifolia) and mounted in a grey frame in "floating" style, pressed in place between two panes of glass allowing a dark background to be seen behind the collage.
My birchbark brains were a hit at the lab gift exchange!
#BrainArt #neuroart #neurodev #Neuroskyence
Digital mockup for lab gift exchange art is done! Different colors represent germinal zones/cortical plate, basal nuclei anlage, choroid plexus, and other brain parenchyma.
#devneuro followers—can you catch any mistakes before I start cutting out the pieces?
Kudos to the Camp/Theis/Treutlein labs for compiling this amazing resource for the field!
Particularly interesting addition since the preprint: comparison to fetal data beyond the first trimester, finding that organoids start modeling the second right on schedule but also retain early signatures
The NIH has issued 2⃣ #funding opportunities to develop #microphysiologicalsystems (organs-on-chips/tissue chips) for human #neuroscience research. 🧠 The use of non-human tissues will not be considered. Take note of the deadlines below! grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...
#NAMs #OOCs
just remember, it could be worse: bsky.app/profile/invi...
I'd love to join! PhD candidate working with neural organoids
oof—five full workweeks to analyze a single embryo like this. Never going to complain about debugging an ImageJ macro again
life before ImageJ!
In general, we need to get past a pure deficit model of #scicomm.
Some distrust is due to lack of understanding. But if we feel the need to scrupulously hide what we're doing from the public that funds it, our professional values may have diverged from theirs enough to need a course correction
Press release about Morning Consult poll conducted September 2024, finding ≥80% agreement with the statements "The US government should commit to a plan to phase out experiments on animals,” “Government funding should prioritize research methods that do not involve animal testing,” and “Animal experimentation should be phased out in favor of more modern research methods"
Historical data from Gallup's American Values and Beliefs poll, showing trend of Americans saying medical testing on animals is "morally wrong" increasing from 27% in 2001 to 45% in 2021
Most recent (2024) Gallup poll, finding 48% believe medical testing on animals is "morally acceptable" and 46% "morally wrong"
Series of Pew Research Center polls from 2019 to 2024, showing a near doubling in the % of US adults who have "not too much" or "none at all" confidence in scientists to act in the best interests of the public (from 13% to 23%)
Some life scientists are defensive about calls to replace animal research, but polls show it's what the citizens who fund us want.
With antivaxxers in power & trust in sci falling, we should jump at the chance to show we share popular values by incorporating & talking up more non-animal methods
I'd love to be added too!
screenshot from a paper abstract with highlighted sentence: "We used single cell RNA sequencing on 466 cells to capture the cellular complexity of the adult and fetal human brain at a whole transcriptome level."
2015 was a simpler time
Making my first single-cell RNA sequencing library and it's an oddly spiritual experience. Years of hopes and dreams concentrated into one drop of clear liquid, purified over and over, invisibly shimmering with millions of precious data points like a pearl in Indra's net
Section showing a strip of tissue with a parallel scaffold of red cells, and others in other colors migrating along it
microscopy image with a strip of magenta honeycomb pattern, a thick strip of green nuclei, a thinner strip of blue ones, and a yellow stripe
Hi Bluesky! I work on stem-cell-based alternatives to animal models of human brain development, have many opinions both correct and spicy, and sometimes take pretty pictures
Hello! PhD student working on mechanobiology and morphogenesis in brain organoids, looking ahead to a career in alternatives to animal research. Semi-anonymous online because I'm a little too intense about it for a professional account, but I would love to join!