Scientists will use Neanderthal's DNA to create artificial human brain

 Lab technician checking sample in Beijing.
Representational picture Reuters

A team of scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology situated in Germany would create miniature brain from human stem cells.

The revolutionary work will also be genetically engineered to contain Neanderthal DNA. Experts believe that such DNA in the newly engineered brain will help scientists to understand how modern humans are different from Neanderthal men.

However, the new brain will not be able to achieve any kinds of thoughts and emotions like a normal human brain. Through this research, experts aim to understand how the human brain develops and evolves as a cognitively impeccable organ.

"Neanderthals are the closest relatives to everyday humans, so if we should define ourselves as a group or a species it is really them that we should compare ourselves to. We want to know whether among those things, is there something hiding there that really sets us apart? Is there a biological basis for why modern humans went on to become millions and eventually billions of people, spread across the world and have culture?," said Professor Svante Pääbo, lead researcher of this study, Guardian reports.

But the research has already stirred up ethical concerns among hardcore religious believers. In this case, skeptics believe experiments like these are against the cosmic law and it will fetch undesired results.

A week ago, a Yale University Academic revealed that he successfully managed to keep pig brains alive for more than 36 hours after they were detached from the body.

In November 2017, Italian surgeon Sergio Canavero along with his Chinese colleague Xiaoping Ren claimed to have carried out the first head transplant after an 18-hour-long surgical procedure. He had conducted similar experiments in mice, pigs and monkeys too but, the success ratio is still maintained under the wraps.

Canavero's moves have always fetched negative criticisms from skeptics, and many people blamed that human head transplant will make billionaires live forever, and sometimes, they may even start killing people to find donors.

This article was first published on May 13, 2018
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