One of the most prominent questions in modern medicine is how to treat neural disorders/diseases effectively. Numerous studies have attempted to understand how to treat neural diseases, such as Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, or Huntington's Disease. At the same time, other research has focused on how to best treat impairments like hearing loss or loss of mobility after a catastrophic brain injury. With all these complex mechanisms of disease and the brain regions they affect, wouldn't it be helpful to have a catalog of the suspected brain regions involved in each injury/disease or previous research findings made? That is precisely what a team of researchers attempts to do with their work through the BRAIN Initiative Cell Census Network (BICCN). In one of their articles titled "Cellular Atlases of the Entire Mouse Brain," this team of researchers aimed to categorize and record every mouse brain cell to better understand how to treat neural diseases. For this massive undertaking of a project, the team not only reported over 5,300 different cell clusters but also elements of cells such as location and what neural tissues the cells interact with (Schlott). They hope this level of specific information will aid future researchers in their attempts to map what areas of the brain are responsible for different diseases and what is structurally different within those regions. The mouse brain was also chosen for this project for its similarity to the human brain. Using a model like humans supports the ongoing effort to map the human brain and better understand how the brain works.
While Dr. Wei Ming Yu and the research team in their article, "Critical Role of Hepsin/TMPRSS1 in Hearing and Tectorial Membrane Morphogenesis: Insights from Transgenic Mouse Models," does not directly relate to the work of the BICCN, their work serves as an example of the type of work that could be cataloged in this vast resource of information. Dr. Yu et al. provided information about the crucial role that hepsin plays in hearing and structural abnormalities in hepsin-lacking mice. Their attempts and discoveries about the crucial role of this protein and the structural abnormalities it causes could potentially be translated into something that would help humans who exhibit profound hearing loss (Yu et al.). For example, it was found that if human-hepsin lines were introduced into the hepsin-lacking mice, a partial hearing function was recovered, and the structural differences were lessened (Yu et al.). This particular finding could help researchers develop a new treatment for specific hearing abnormalities in humans. Other researchers could study this finding more in-depth if the information was cataloged and made available to them, which is exactly what the BICCN aims to provide (Schlott). The "groundwork" already being accomplished makes it easier for future researchers to study more complex problems stemming from earlier research.
With so much information and new insights being discovered, it makes sense to have a "library" of resources available to teams of researchers. Better identifying and labeling cell clusters of mice can make it easier for teams of researchers to study a more direct problem. For example, if a team of researchers wanted to specifically study and identify what populations of cells and neurons were involved/damaged when Hepsin was removed from the mice, they would know exactly where to begin if the information was made available to them through the BICCN network. These researchers could further catalog their findings into the cell clusters' folder, possibly inspiring another group to dive deeper into the problem. Having an organized and detailed map of cell clusters in a mouse brain can inspire future generations of researchers to dive deeper into problems and try to find cures for various neural diseases and conditions.
Sources:
Schlott, Karin. “First Atlas of Every Mouse Brain Cell Could Improve Neuro Disease Treatments.” Scientific American, Scientific American, 20 Feb. 2024, www.scientificamerican.com/article/first-atlas-of-every-mouse-brain-cell-could-improve-neuro-disease-treatments/.
Tosches, Maria Antonietta, and Heather J. Lee. “Cellular Atlases of the Entire Mouse Brain.” Nature News, Nature Publishing Group, 13 Dec. 2023, www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03781-1.
Yu, Wei-Ming, et al. Critical Role of Hepsin/TMPRSS1 in Hearing and Tectorial Membrane Morphogenesis: Insights from Transgenic Mouse Models, 2024.
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