A team of researchers from the Center for Brain&Disease Research at KU Leuven and the Institute for Interdisciplinary Research in Human and Molecular Biology (IRIBHM) at ULB has discovered that mitochondria, the energy factory in cells, are responsible for the rate at which the brain develops. According to his work published in the journal Science and presented on Thursday, the discovery provides a better understanding of the evolution of the human species and has important implications for certain neurological diseases.
The human brain grows for several years before fully developing, more slowly than in other species (several weeks for mice, for example), but we still did not know the precise origins of this slow and important maturation for its functioning. Scientists have discovered that mitochondria, responsible for energy production in cells, set the pace for this neuronal maturation. “Neurons have an hourglass to measure time, and this hourglass is provided by mitochondria“, details the researcher Pierre Vanderhaeghen. “This is an important step in understanding one of biology’s greatest mysteries: what makes the human brain so distinct from other species, and why our brains can be so susceptible to certain diseases?”
The scientific team made this discovery thanks to the development of a new genetic tool that measures the development time of neurons. According to the researchers, it will therefore be useful in accelerating basic and pharmaceutical research on human neurological or psychiatric diseases, “strongly hampered by slow human neural developmentThe work could have important implications for certain brain diseases that strike mitochondria and lead to early brain symptoms.