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Podcast: UC San Diego (Video)
Episode: CARTA: Neanderthalizing Brain Organoids with Alysson Muotri
Description: Humans live in a world of ideas—born in the brain, shared through language, accumulated in culture across generations, and made reality. Professor Alysson Muotri, UC San Diego Departments of Pediatrics and Cellular and Molecular Medicine, examines how human brain evolution reflects the interplay between genetic innovation and environmental pressures, focusing on Neuro-oncological ventral antigen 1 (NOVA1), an evolutionarily conserved splicing regulator essential for neural development with a protein-coding substitution unique to modern humans compared with Neanderthals and Denisovans. By reintroducing the archaic NOVA1 allele into human induced pluripotent stem cells and studying cortical organoids, the work finds accelerated maturation, increased su...