美国斯克里普斯研究所Kristin K. Baldwin等研究人员，合作开发出由两个物种的神经元构建的功能性感觉回路。这一研究成果于2024年4月25日发表在国际学术期刊《细胞》上。

研究人员应用囊胚互补来选择性地构建和测试了种间神经回路。尽管经过了大约1000万到2000万年的演化，大脑大小也存在明显的物种差异，但注入小鼠囊胚的大鼠多能干细胞仍能在整个小鼠大脑中发育和存活。意想不到的是，小鼠大脑皮层和海马体中的大鼠神经元的出生日期被重新编程，从而支持了大鼠与小鼠之间的突触活动。

当小鼠嗅觉神经元被基因沉默或杀死时，大鼠神经元会恢复气味处理回路的信息流。此外，大鼠神经元还能挽救寻找食物的原始行为，尽管效果不如小鼠神经元。通过揭示小鼠可以利用另一个物种的神经元感知世界，研究人员将神经囊胚互补作为一种强大的工具，用于识别大脑发育、可塑性和修复的保守机制。

据介绍，再生神经科学的一个核心问题是，合成神经回路（如由两个物种构建的回路）能否在完整的大脑中发挥作用。

附：英文原文

Title: Functional sensory circuits built from neurons of two species

Author: Benjamin T. Throesch, Muhammad Khadeesh bin Imtiaz, Rodrigo Muoz-Castaeda, Masahiro Sakurai, Andrea L. Hartzell, Kiely N. James, Alberto R. Rodriguez, Greg Martin, Giordano Lippi, Sergey Kupriyanov, Zhuhao Wu, Pavel Osten, Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, Jun Wu, Kristin K. Baldwin

Issue&Volume: 2024/04/25

Abstract: A central question for regenerative neuroscience is whether synthetic neural circuits, such as those built from two species, can function in an intact brain. Here, we apply blastocyst complementation to selectively build and test interspecies neural circuits. Despite approximately 10–20 million years of evolution, and prominent species differences in brain size, rat pluripotent stem cells injected into mouse blastocysts develop and persist throughout the mouse brain. Unexpectedly, the mouse niche reprograms the birth dates of rat neurons in the cortex and hippocampus, supporting rat-mouse synaptic activity. When mouse olfactory neurons are genetically silenced or killed, rat neurons restore information flow to odor processing circuits. Moreover, they rescue the primal behavior of food seeking, although less well than mouse neurons. By revealing that a mouse can sense the world using neurons from another species, we establish neural blastocyst complementation as a powerful tool to identify conserved mechanisms of brain development, plasticity, and repair.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.03.042

Source: https://www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(24)00358-1