Dr. Sergiu Pașcă

And I said, what?

You guys are keeping them for such a long time?

Yeah, they just keep growing.

They're in the incubator.

So then we actually did the first study.

And then we had a series of three studies done over the years of like trying to ask, how far do they go in development?

So if you have a clump of human neurons that you've made from pluripotent stem cells and you keep feeding them in a dish, how far do they go in development?

Do they...

Move much faster?

Do they move much slower?

Are they stuck at one point in development?

And it turns out that they actually keep track of development beautifully to such an extent that, for instance, we discover when they reach nine months of keeping them in a dish, so about the time of birth, they literally switch to a postnatal signature.

On their own.

In a dish?

In a dish.

So, you know, there's this classic example

In developmental neurobiology, there's this protein that usually changes around the time of birth.

It's an NMDA receptor.

So maybe some people know about NMDA receptors.

Binding glutamate, they're very important.