Free University of Brussels issued the following announcement on July 3.
To try to better understand the human brain, researchers from the Neurophysiology Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine, ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI) – study the brain of a worm species.
Caenorhabditis elegans is a small nematode worm, one millimeter long, completely transparent, whose practical advantages fascinate biologists. They were thus able to determine exactly all of the 7000 connections established by its 302 neurons. From this “cartographic” point of view, this mini-brain is therefore infinitely better described than our own brain. Despite its simplicity, this mini-brain is enough for the worm to memorize the places most favorable to its growth or reproduction and to get there as quickly as possible.
Led by Patrick Laurent , researchers from the Neurophysiology Laboratory, Faculty of Medicine, ULB Neuroscience Institute (UNI) used a new approach to characterize the 302 neurons of C. elegans in a single experiment. Their study has just been published in the journal Nucleic Acid Research.
The researchers thus discovered in the worm molecular signatures of olfactory, motor, pleasure, etc. neurons. very close molecularly to these same neural types in the human brain. But surprise: for a mini-brain of 302 neurons, C. elegans already has more than 76 distinct neural types. On the scale of the 100 billion neurons in the human brain, such neuronal diversity would generate several hundreds of millions of neural types still to be identified in humans.
Many mechanisms and factors identified in C. elegans are conserved in humans, and have already led to major discoveries such as, for example, apoptosis or programmed cell suicide, a cellular mechanism found in all animal species.
Next objective for Patrick Laurent and his team: to discover how embryogenesis generates each of the neuronal types. Their data already allow several predictions.
“Describing and understanding these ol differentiation processes in worms allows us to identify factors and understand the mechanisms that induce cell differentiation. These mechanisms and factors are often the same in humans, ”emphasizes the researcher.
Original source: https://actus.ulb.be/fr/actus/recherche/le-mini-cerveau-de-c-elegans
