Ferrets, the key to better understanding the evolution of our brain

A genetically modified ferret may be the key to understanding how the human brain evolved to its current size, at Yale University they have achieved this animal model with which they seek to understand how it's possible that our brain has tripled its size in the last 7 million of years.

Because it's a relatively large brain, larger than a mouse and has more similarities with humans and therefore is easier to study. The problem is to activate a gene in the genome in a living animal from which there's almost no study of its genetics. This task is complicated because it must be done through different and complicated techniques that have already been well tested in mice but not so much in ferrets.

For all this, the specific technology to inactivate genes in ferrets has had to be developed, obtaining a model in which a very important gene for brain development can be deactivated and therefore the functions of that gene can be better studied and what It could happen in humans.

In humans it was already known that its deactivation is related to microcephaly, although it's also very interesting from the evolutionary point of view of the brain to see if it's involved in the increase of our cerebral cortex, that region full of neurons and structured in a series of layers that is what has grown most in human brains. These scientists try to reproduce a model of human microcephaly in the ferret to study a little what happens in a brain level.

There are genetic signals that about 5,000 years ago some variant appeared around this gene and is associated with the cognitive improvements . This gene acts on some stem cells in the brain that are the ones that later, when they divide and separate, form all the layers of the cerebral cortex. Being able to have this animal model of a mammal closer to the human being can help to study exactly how this gene works in these stem cells and how it affects them.