Mini brains grown from stem cells developed eye-like features (2021)
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
What would happen if the adult human donor took these embryonic-like cells and reinjected them? Would the person develop the vim and vigor of a young adult?
From Ancient Greek τέρατος (tératos, “monster”).
Aptly named, I would say.
"Pluripotent stem cells including human induced pluripotent stem cells have a unique property of being able to generate teratomas when injected in rodents in the research laboratory.[62] For this reason, the so-called "teratoma assay" is one of the gold-standard validation assays for pluripotent stem cells.[63] Because differentiated human pluripotent stem cells are being developed as the basis for numerous regenerative medicine therapies, there is concern that residual undifferentiated stem cells could lead to teratoma formation in injected patients, and researchers are working to develop methods to address this concern.[64]"
Our bodies differentiate cells into different lineages precisely when it is developmentally necessary. You don't want to turn the clock in reverse. That's a disease state and a hallmark of cancer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_lineage
On the subject of developmental biology, this is a really fun image if you aren't familiar:
Well, you actually do want to turn the clock in reverse. That's a hallmark of the highest so far methodology standard in science: if you want to position that you gained a full understanding of an object, you need to be able to reverse engineer it both in space and time. Many cancers contain senescence associated secretory phenotype (SASP) and senolytic drugs have been researched to be able to neutralize cancer cells as well as senescent cells.
You do want to turn the clock in reverse, only maybe not the whole way back to the embryonic state, but a couple of formal years or decades back to reset the epigenome, and this is exactly what David Sinclair, Vittorio Sebastiano and many others are undertaking now.
We can’t even do this with simple black box game playing AIs, so a new paradigm may be needed.
is this how hackers are born?
Boltzmann Brains don't fluctuate into existence, they get created when entropy is moderate enough to produce galaxies with people in them that develop tech for cloning.
Would it even make sense to use words? Maybe a visual/interactive medium like a game would make more sense.
On that note, what does somebody who was born blind perceive? Do they perceive blackness or is there no sense of sight at all?
Just as when the discussion is about AI, it is my sad belief that we as a species do not have a single concept of consciousness sufficient to even be tested for, merely a collection of vague ideas that at best refer to each other and at worst to nothing at all.
edit: apparently there are no laws banning human cloning!
(Also, I find it interesting that most of internal organs are not symmetrical)
And they can sometimes grow 'mirrored': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situs_inversus
Bilateria is the reason the number is even… some common ancestor after you split with spiders is the “exactly two” reason, which i think is all vertebrates now, or at least close to that level.
No, but it's a very common number in more advanced organisms, and the smallest possible that satisfies bilaterality/symmetry.
it's a tedious point
Anyway, this was not what the question was about. It was more about how this cell culture decides where the eyes go and how many there should be.
Neurons connect and disconnect via hebbian and anti-hebbian processes in response to the stimulus, so in a way the impact of light energy is structured within a biological substrate.
> In previous studies, only pure retinal cells or optic cups were grown in the lab individually. Jay Gopalakrishnan, an organoid expert at University Hospital Düsseldorf, and his colleagues used iPSC-grown mini brains to see if eye structures could develop as an integrated part of the organoid—instead of growing the two parts separately, Science Alert reports.