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By transplanting human brain organoids into mice, researchers created a new in vivo platform that could advance the study of human neural functions and drug testing.    Originally written by Mariella Bodemeier Loayza Careaga, PhD, on Sep 16, 2026   Researchers created a new transplantation mouse model that shows extensive connectivity between human-derived brain organoid cells (green and red) and the mouse host brain (blue). Image credit: Pasca lab, Stanford University. (CC BY 4.0) F or over a decade, Stanford University neuroscientist Sergiu Pasca has looked for strategies to study human brain functions and its disorders. In Pasca’s eyes, using human induced pluripotent stem cells to create human-derived brain organoids—three-dimensional, self-organized tissues grown in a dish—and transplanting them into rodent hosts is an opportunity to achieve this goal. In a study published in Nature , his team described a new mouse model into which they transplanted human-derived ne...

  Originally published by Kamal Naha   A single-cell parasite relies on two genes that boost each other's activity to switch into "defense mode" when attacked by the immune system.   A new study could help scientists find a cure to lifelong infections caused by the parasite Toxoplasma gondii.   (Image credit: KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY via Getty Images)   The parasite Toxoplasma gondii hides in up to half of humans (opens in new tab) , although it rarely causes symptoms. But when it infects mice, the single-cell organism can exert a kind of "mind control" to change the rodents' behavior and help itself spread.  Now, researchers report being one step closer to curing T. gondii infections in humans, which can be lifelong due to the parasite's ability to morph into a dormant, defensive state. Two transcription factors — proteins that switch genes "on" and "off" — lie at the root of this metamorphosis, and the discovery...