The common fruit fly is proving uncommonly good at helping us understand the brain

In much of commerce, “the middleman” is a derisive phrase for someone often attributed with driving costs up. Having known a few of those folks, they defend their role saying they actually make the process of distributing goods more efficient. Now, a new study offers some evidence that the brain’s middlemen do indeed make the process of creating and wiring our brains more efficient.

A team from the University of Oregon has shown that a certain set of these middlemen, called intermediate neural progenitors, which are made by a specific neural stem cell, can make large quantities of many different types of nerve cells. The team worked with fruit flies, but they say similar cells exist in humans.

A press release from the university was picked up by this biotech news site and quoted the senior author on the study Chris Doe:

“Instead of just making 100 copies of the same neuron to expand the pool, these progenitors make a whole bunch of different neurons in a particular way, a sequence. Not only are you bulking up the numbers but you’re creating more neural diversity.”

The study was published online today in Nature ahead of a scheduled June 27 print date. The abstract is here.

As a long-term goal the team hopes to be able to use stem cells to generate large numbers of very specific nerve cells needed for therapy. The press release quote Doe on this possibility:

“If human biologists understand how the different types of neurons are made, if we can tell them ‘This is the pathway by which x, y and z neurons are made,’ then they may be able to reprogram and redirect stem cells to make these precise neurons.”

Another option for making specific neurons is to directly tell another type of adult cell to become the desired nerve cell by giving it specific genetic instructions. We have written about CIRM grantees working on this option here. DG