Overview
- The peer‑reviewed paper published online Sept. 18, 2026 reports that the developing brain arises from two mutually exclusive progenitor pools marked by Otx2 in the front and Gbx2 in the back.
- The two progenitor populations show fundamentally different chromatin configurations during gastrulation that commit each group to separate developmental fates.
- Using findings from mouse embryos, the team applied that developmental program to human pluripotent stem cells and produced functional hindbrain motor neurons that fire action potentials and express region‑specific proteins.
- The result explains decades of difficulty growing hindbrain neurons in vitro and creates a new platform to study brain‑stem diseases such as SMA and ALS, though the authors note a very brief common progenitor period cannot yet be fully excluded.
- Comparative analyses find the same two‑origin pattern across species, suggesting an ancient split about 500–550 million years ago, and the work involved Stanford with collaborators at Caltech and UCSF and was supported by agencies including the NIH.