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By Anayelly Medina This post was written as part of a class assignment from students who took a neuroethics course with Dr. Rommelfanger in Paris in Summer 2016. Anayelly is a rising Senior at Emory University majoring in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology. The Chimera is a Greek mythological fire-breathing monstrosity composed of multiple animal parts with the head of a lion, the body of a goat, and the tail of a snake. Not surprisingly, in the realm of science, chimera is also the name given to an organism or embryo containing a mixture of cells from two species. Recently, the world has learned of the current research efforts being made towards growing human organs in other animals, specifically pigs [ 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 ]. From these efforts, the human-pig chimera has been developed and so have ethical questions concerning the process and outcomes of this research. According to the United Network for Organ Sharing , in the United States, about 22 people die each day while waiting for ...

What makes humans smart?  This was the primary question posed in the final Journal Club of the Spring 2013 semester.  Led by Riley Zeller-Townson, the club discussed Han et al. (2013), a paper that discusses the enhancement of learning in mice after grafting human glial progenitor cells into their brains. Riley began by explaining the paper and the work leading up to it. Most of the roles of glial cells involve supporting and protecting neurons, such as synaptic plasticity, myelination, and maintaining the blood-brain barrier (Barres, 2003). This study focuses on one subtype of glia, called astrocytes, cells that provide nutrients to neurons (Tsacopoulos et al, 1996). Neurons (shown on left) possess both axons and dendrites and are shaped differently than glial cells ( Source ).  The glial cell shown on the right is an astrocyte, which is more “star” shaped due to its many branched processes (Han et al 2013). While people generally think of neurons as being the important ...