On April 25, 2024, the journal "Cell" published online a research paper titled "Generation of Rat Forebrain Tissues in Mice." This study was a collaborative effort involving the YANG Hui group and ZHOU Haibo group, WU Jun's group . The research introduced an efficient interspecies blastocyst complementation system and for the first time generated functional rat forebrain tissues in mice, while revealing the autonomous and non-autonomous influences on cellular development in the context of interspecies forebrain chimeric backgrounds. This has significant implications for understanding the mechanisms of brain development in a developmental context and provides a new platform for generating human organs in experimental animals.
On February 2nd, 2024, Science published an online research article entitled “Whole-brain spatial organization of hippocampal single-neuron projectomes”. The study established a comprehensive database of whole-brain single-neuron projectome consisting of over 10000 neurons at the mesoscopic level in mouse hippocampus, revealing the spatial connectivity patterns of mouse hippocampal neurons.
On January 4, 2024, the research paper titled "Piezo1-dependent regulation of pericyte proliferation by blood flow during brain vascular development" was published online in the journal "Cell Reports." This study was conducted by DU Jiulin’s research group. In this work, the researchers created a zebrafish model for in vivo labeling of brain pericytes, and systematically explored the developmental dynamics of brain pericytes during the early embryonic stage, revealing the promoting effect of blood flow on the proliferation of pericytes after ingress into the brain. They further elucidated that this process relies on the activation of the mechanosensitive ion channel Piezo1 in vascular endothelial cells (ECs) and its downstream Notch signaling.
