Building brains using synthetic biology across scales
Abstract
How does the brain work? Prior starting points to answering this question, such as the “brain as a computer” approach lacks depth, while the molecular/genomic scale approach lacks breadth, thereby limiting our understanding. This project offers a transformative starting point to argue that the brain is composed of living, adaptive matter capable of computation at the genomic scale, the cellular scale, and the tissue scale in a nested structure with feedback between the different scales. While this unifying starting point may seem obvious-but-unwieldy to many, the recipient argues that it is now possible to develop quantitative predictions for the shape, structure, and function of the brain, and, more importantly, to test them. The recipient will achieve the objective computationally with the following two tasks: (1) adapt a cellular-based model of living tissue called a vertex model to the developing brain, (2) incorporate information from the chromatin (genomic) scale into the vertex model with various feedback rules between the different scales. With these two tasks, the recipient will formulate quantifiable hypotheses that can be tested against experiments on brain organoids, a rapidly-developing field of synthetic biology, once labs reopen. To be specific, the recipient will formulate predictions for the emergent shape, structure and the amount of neuronal diversity in a growing brain organoid as a function of the feedback rules between the chromatin, cellular, and multicellular scales. This transformative approach, called materials neuroscience, will break new ground in understanding how the brain works from simple physical principles.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Jun 25, 2021
- Source ID
- HQ00342010026
Entities
People
- Jennifer Schwarz
Organizations
- Office of the Secretary of Defense
- Syracuse University
- Washington Headquarters Services