黑料吃瓜资源

Your brain begins as a single cell. When all is said and done, it will house an incredibly complex and powerful network of some 170 billion cells. How does it organize itself along the way? 黑料吃瓜资源 neuroscientists have come up with a surprisingly simple answer that could have far-reaching implications for biology and artificial intelligence.

Stan Kerstjens, a postdoc in Professor Anthony Zador鈥檚 lab, frames the question in terms of positional information. 鈥淭he only thing a cell 鈥榮ees鈥� is itself and its neighbors,鈥� he explains. 鈥淏ut its fate depends on where it sits. A cell in the wrong place becomes the wrong thing, and the brain doesn鈥檛 develop right. So, every cell must solve two questions: Where am I? And who do I need to become?鈥�

In a study published in Neuron, Kerstjens, Zador, and colleagues at Harvard University and ETH Z眉rich put forward a new theory for how the brain organizes itself during development.

For a long time, researchers thought that cells exchanged positional information mainly through chemical signaling. This works well when dealing with just a few cells, Kerstjens explains. But the brain isn鈥檛 a few cells. It鈥檚 billions of neurons, each needing to land in exactly the right place. Chemical signals can only travel so far before fading. So, how do cells deep in a growing brain automatically 鈥榢now鈥� where they are?

The answer, Kerstjens proposes, hits close to home. 鈥淐onsider how human populations spread across a country over generations,鈥� he says. 鈥淒escendants settle near their parents, so people who share ancestry end up in neighboring regions, producing large-scale geographic structures without long-range communication. We argue that a similar principle operates in the developing brain. Cells that descend from the same progenitor tend to remain near one another.鈥�

To test this theory, Kerstjens and colleagues built what they call a 鈥渓ineage-based model of scalable positional information.鈥� They started with theoretical computations. Then they tested their hypothesis at scale by looking at individual and group gene expression in developing mouse brains. Finally, they confirmed their results in zebrafish, showing that the model can be used across brains of different sizes.

Kerstjens says the model supports the notion that chemical signaling works in conjunction with a lineage-based mechanism to convey positional information. And while his work focuses on the brain, the theory could apply to many other types of developing tissue, including tumors. There may even be implications for self-replicating AI models that pass information from one generation to the next, just as our own brain cells do.

Perhaps most importantly, showing how a single cell grows into a complex organ could help scientists solve fundamental mysteries of the mind. 鈥淭he brain somehow makes us intelligent,鈥� Kerstjens says. 鈥淗ow did it manage to accumulate this capability, not just over its developmental time, but over evolutionary time? This is one piece in that big puzzle.鈥�

Written by: Margaret Osborne, Science Writer | [email protected] | 516-367-8455

Funding

Mathers Foundation, ETH Z眉rich

Citation

Kerstjens, S., et al., 鈥淎 lineage-based model of scalable positional information in vertebrate brain development鈥�, Neuron, March 2, 2026. DOI: