Just in case there is such a thing as a zombie apocalypse happening sometime in the near future as popular culture has depicted in the movies, on the TV as well as in a comics series, perhaps having fantastic hand-to-hand combat skills, sufficient ammunition and the kind of strategic know-how in winning a battle against zombies and other opportunistic humans, perhaps a different approach might work better – by giving zombies what they want most – brains. Researchers have apparently managed to create a brain grown in a petri dish using stem cells, and while the purpose of this research is not to grow a supply of brains to ward off zombies, it is meant to help scientists being able to better study neurological diseases.
Biologists at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna have made use of stem cells to grow a human brain, and it is far from the finished article. Rather, it consists of small 3D sections of tissue which resemble the brain of a 9-week-old fetus – or at least that is the best estimate, measuring around 3 to 4 mm in size. There are still distinct regions of the brain visible despite being far from fully developed, including the dorsal cortex, ventral forebrain, and an immature retina.
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