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Now Human-Frog Hybrids to Study Autism
The researchers say that frog eggs work a little like human neurons, and that the hybrid cells act as a surrogate of a living brain with the condition.
"It's almost as if you were studying a neuron in the human brain," New Scientist magazine quoted Ricardo Miledi, a neurobiologist who developed the approach and has previously used Xenopus eggs to study epilepsy, as saying.
A previous study led by Miledi suggested that some brain cells of epilepsy patients have trouble sensing a molecule that helps damp down neuron activity.
Miledi said that the proteins called neurotransmitter receptors sense the chemicals that neurons use to communicate.
With a view to determining whether abnormalities in neurotransmitter signalling also underlie autism, the researchers collected brain samples from six deceases autistic patients, aged eight to 39.
The brain-cell membranes, which house neurotransmitter receptors, were fused with Xenopus egg membranes.
The researchers also did the same with brain cells from the people who were not mentally ill.
Miledi's team then doused the frog eggs in neurotransmitter chemicals, and measured the voltage generated within each egg.
They observed that the neurotransmitter chemicals tell brain cells to pump charged molecules in and out the membrane, creating a voltage across the membrane.
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