The activity of the team “Brain in a Dish” focuses on the in vitro modeling of cortical development. In the last 10 years the team developed protocols to steer the differentiation of  mouse and human pluripotent cells toward distinct brain identities. Using in vitro models of embryonic development, we aim to discover new molecular mechanisms of corticogenesis control and of cortical activity. We have focused our attention to the mechanisms generating different cortical  (pallial) structures: cerebral cortex, hippocampus, entorhinal cortex. We have assayed in vitro differentiated cells in experiments of grafting into the mouse brain. We are actively analyzing the formation of functional neural networks with distinct patterns of neuronal firing rate and synchronization depending on the identity of neural cell progenitors. These activities rely on  the  availability of facilities and methods that we have acquired in the last decade, thanks to the support of the Scuola to Bio@SNS.  A large and comprehensive facility of cell culture of Bio@SNS is devoted to the neralization of mouse embryonic stem cells (mEScs) and human induced pluripotent cells (hiPSCs) to generate 2D neural cultures, brain organoids and neuronal cultures for neuronal activity studies. Methods of computational analyses of mRNA and miRNA libraries have been developed to address the molecular analysis of cultured neurons. A new platform for the parallel analysis and stimulation of 4096 independent electrodes was recently acquired to study the electrical activity of 2D neuronal networks.

The activity of the team of “Brain in a dish” is is fully integrated with, and dependent on,  the activity of the other teams of Bio@SNS as for computational analyses, neurophysiology, molecular biology, microscopy imaging and in vivo experiments are concerned. In particular, the team depends on crucial facilities shared with other teams of Bio@SNS such as the molecular biology laboratories, the sequencing and oligonucleotide synthesis services, a common store of general use primary antibodies, epifluorescence and confocal microscopies, a Next Generation Sequencing device, a new platform for the analysis of neuronal electrical activity through Multiple Electrode Array (MEA).  Moreover, due to its interdisciplinary nature, the team of “Brain in a Dish” is deeply advantaged by the daily interaction with the other teams of neurophysiologists (Prof. Tommaso Pizzorusso) , computational biologists (Francesco Raimondi) and molecular geneticists (Prof Alessandro cellerino) of Bio@SNS.