Activation of peroxymonosulfate and photothermal for removal of phenolic organic pollutants and lignin derivatives

Peer-Reviewed Publication

KEAI COMMUNICATIONS CO., LTD.

 

IMAGE: C-DEFECTIVE AND C–O BAND ULTRATHIN POROUS G-C₃N₄ PHOTOTHERMAL-CATALYTIC SYNERGISTIC PMS DEGRADATION OF BISPHENOL POLLUTANTS AND SODIUM LIGNOSULFONATE. view more 

CREDIT: THE AUTHORS

At present, the traditional ways to deal with the above two kinds of pollutants are mainly physical adsorption and biodegradation. The main disadvantages of these ways are incomplete treatment and long treatment period. Although the new photocatalytic technology uses clean energy and has mild reaction conditions, it also has the disadvantages of slow reaction speed and incomplete treatment. Compared with above ways to remove bisphenol pollutants and lignin derivatives, advanced technology to oxidize peroxymonosulfate has faster reaction rate and. However, it causes more metal ions to dissolve leading to secondary pollution to living organisms and the environment. To mitigate the issue, the ultimate solution should ideally combine photocatalytic technology and advanced peroxymonosulfate oxidation technology to eliminate the dissolution of metal ions—a team of researchers based in Canada did just that.

researchers developed a new method for the synthesis of C-defects/C-O band-modified ultrathin porous carbon nitride, a material that has the potential to address this issue. "Carbon nitride has been widely used as a photocatalyst; however, conventional carbon nitrides have insufficient oxidizing ability and are not strong in activating peroxymonosulfate. This is largely due to their relatively small specific surface area and lack of active sites,” explained Jinguang Hu, corresponding author of the study.

Hu and his team constructed a porous ultra-thin carbon nitride material with C-defects and C-O bands using a one-step method. It can be synthesized by grinding and mixing urea nitrate, oxyacetic acid and urea evenly, and then directly thermally polymerizing in a muffle furnace. The catalyst not only increases specific surface area, but also the defect structure and doping elements to provide more active sites. Notably, the catalyst has very good photothermal performance which can accelerate the catalytic reaction process.

The team reported their study in the KeAi journal Green Energy and Environment.

"A large amount of bisphenol pollutants and lignin derivatives are constantly produced in the world,” noted Hu. “We believe this new advanced oxidation technology system can pave the way for the removal of such organic pollutants.”

###

 

Contact the corresponding author: Jinguang Hu, jinguang.hu@ucalgary.ca

The publisher KeAi was established by Elsevier and China Science Publishing & Media Ltd to unfold quality research globally. In 2013, our focus shifted to open access publishing. We now proudly publish more than 100 world-class, open access, English language journals, spanning all scientific disciplines. Many of these are titles we publish in partnership with prestigious societies and academic institutions, such as the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC).

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JOURNAL

Green Energy & Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.gee.2023.01.006 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Advanced oxidation via the synergy of C-defective/ C–O band modified ultrathin porous g-C3N4 and PMS for efficient photothermal degradation of bisphenol pollutants and lignin derivatives

First patient receives milestone stem cell-based transplant for Parkinson’s Disease

Business Announcement

LUND UNIVERSITY

This is a joint press release from Lund University and Skåne University Hospital:

On 13th of February, a transplant of stem cell-derived nerve cells was administered to a person with Parkinson’s at Skåne University Hospital, Sweden. The product has been developed by Lund University and it is now being tested in patients for the first time. The transplantation product is generated from embryonic stem cells and functions to replace the dopamine nerve cells which are lost in the parkinsonian brain. This patient was the first of eight with Parkinson’s disease who will receive the transplant.

“This is an important milestone on the road towards a cell therapy that can be used to treat patients with Parkinson’s disease. The transplantation has been completed as planned, and the correct location of the cell implant has been confirmed by a magnetic resonance imaging. Any potential effects of the STEM PD-product may take several years. The patient has been discharged from the hospital and evaluations will be conducted according to the study protocol,” says Gesine Paul-Visse, principal investigator for the STEM-PD clinical trial,consultant neurologist at Skåne University Hospital and adjunct professor at Lund University in Sweden.

There are around eight million people living with Parkinson’s disease globally; a disease which involves loss of dopamine nerve cells deep in the brain, leading to problems in controlling movement. The standard treatment for Parkinson’s disease are medications that replace the lost dopamine, but over time these medications often become less effective and cause side effects. As of today, there are no treatments that can repair the damaged structures within the brain or that can replace the nerve cells that are lost. 

The STEM-PD trial is now testing a new investigational therapy aimed at replacing the lost dopamine cells with healthy ones manufactured from stem cells. The cell product that is being used has been subjected to rigorous pre-clinical tests, to meet the Swedish Medical Products Agency’s quality standards. After being transplanted, the cells are expected to mature into new and healthy dopamine producing nerve cells within the brain.

“With this trial, we hope to demonstrate that the cell product works as expected in patients. Over time, this creates the opportunity to help many more people with Parkinson’s in the future.” says Malin Parmar, professor at Lund University. She leads the STEM-PD team in close collaboration with colleagues at Skåne University Hospital, Cambridge University, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Imperial College London. 

“Further studies are required to move STEM-PD from this first in human trial all the way to a global treatment, and we have therefore worked in close collaboration with the pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk A/S. Their input to the study, as well as operational and regulatory guidance, have been fundamentally important to initiate this first in human study and we look forward to future collaborations.”

A total of eight patients from Sweden and the UK will undergo transplantation at Skåne University Hospital, which has a long tradition of this type of surgery. In fact, the surgical instrument used in the current trial was developed by the university hospital for cell transplantation as early as the 1980s. At this time, stem cells were not available, and instead, neurosurgeons transplanted nerve cells derived from foetal tissue. 

“The brain region that the cells are transplanted into in this trial can be as narrow as four millimetres. The surgical instrument has a very high level of precision, and we are greatly helped by modern imaging techniques” says consultant neurosurgeon Hjálmar Bjartmarz, who carried out the transplantation surgery.

The patients in the trial were diagnosed with Parkinson’s at least ten years ago and are at a moderate stage of their disease. The researchers will follow these patients closely and assessments of cell survival and potential effects will be conducted over the coming years. 

No clinical data or results will be communicated until a sufficient amount of material from the clinical trial has been collected and analyzed, in adherence with health care confidentiality regulations.

Could the background circulation of the record-breaking rainfall in July 2021 in east-central China have been predicted?

Peer-Reviewed Publication

INSTITUTE OF ATMOSPHERIC PHYSICS, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: TOWARDS THE GOAL OF UNDERSTANDING THE DYNAMIC, THERMODYNAMIC, MICROPHYSICAL, AND LAND SURFACE AND BOUNDARY LAYER PROCESSES AND CONDITIONS LEADING TO THE JULY 2021 ZHENGZHOU, HENAN EXTREME RAINFALL EVENT, AND TO UNDERSTAND THE LARGE-SCALE INFLUENCE AND CONTROL ON THE REGIONAL PROCESSES, A SPECIAL COLLECTION OF SIX ARTICLES THAT INVESTIGATE SOME OF THE ABOVE QUESTIONS ARE PUBLISHED IN THIS ISSUE. view more 

CREDIT: ADVANCES IN ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES

In July 2021, unprecedented heavy rainfall occurred in Zhengzhou (east-central China) against a background of a northward shift in the western Pacific subtropical high (WPSH), which is a key atmospheric circulation system affecting the East Asian summer climate. Due to complex air–sea–land interactions, the WPSH exhibits significant interannual to interdecadal variability, which poses a grand challenge to skillfully predicting the climate. In this context, the predictability of the anomalous WPSH in July 2021 remains unknown and deserves careful study.

Recently, in a paper published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences, scientists from the State Key Laboratory of Numerical Modeling for Atmospheric Sciences and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics (LASG), Institute of Atmospheric Physics (IAP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, have revealed both the predictable and unpredictable components of the anomalous WPSH in July 2021 based on large ensemble hindcast experiments using the IAP/LASG ocean–atmosphere coupled model.

“The observed northward shift of the WPSH in July 2021 exhibits a meridional dipole pattern in the 850-hPa geopotential height over the eastern China sea, and the amplitude of geopotential height was the strongest since 1979,” explains Dr Shuai Hu, the lead author of the study. “This meridional dipole pattern corresponds to the two nodes of the so-called Pacific–Japan pattern.”

To reveal the predictability of the anomalous WPSH, Hu and colleagues conducted a 21-member ensemble of seasonal predictions initiated from the end of June 2021. Both the predictable and the unpredictable components of the meridional dipole pattern were identified from the ensemble simulations. The predictable component was driven by positive precipitation anomalies over the tropical western Pacific, which were caused by a positive horizonal advection of the mean moist enthalpy associated with southwesterly anomalies to the northwestern flank of anticyclonic anomalies, which was excited by the La Niña. The unpredictable component was associated with the atmospheric internal intraseasonal oscillations, which were not initialized in the predictions. The relative contributions of the predictable and unpredictable components to the observed northward shift of the WPSH at 850 hPa were 28.0% and 72.0%, respectively.

“Our study calls for attention to be paid to the intraseasonal variability of the WPSH in seasonal predictions. An accurate prediction of the intraseasonal variability is of high priority in efforts devoted to improving the prediction skill for the East Asian summer climate,” says Prof. Tianjun Zhou, corresponding author of the study.

The study is published in a Special Collection on the July 2021 Zhengzhou, Henan Extreme Rainfall Event.

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JOURNAL

Advances in Atmospheric Sciences

DOI

10.1007/s00376-022-2151-x 

ARTICLE TITLE

Seasonal Prediction of the Record-Breaking Northward Shift of the Western Pacific Subtropical High in July 2021

The strong Meiyu in history, beginning with the flood of 1608

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

 

IMAGE: SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION OF THE ANOMALY OF THE EASTERN CHINA TOTAL SUMMER RAINFALL RELATIVE TO THE AVERAGE FROM 1470 TO 1850 IN IGGPRE (A) AND RAP (B) RECONSTRUCTION DATA (UNIT: MM). THE BLACK BOX REPRESENTS THE STUDY AREA. view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is led by Dr. Liang Ning (School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University) and graduate student Liulin Wang (School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University). They have found that interdecadal variability of solar radiation had impact on the strong Meiyu event.

The 1608 flood was very severe and had a certain degree of disintegration of the ruling status of the Ming Dynasty in historical records. Therefore, the team chose this flood as the entry point of this study. And they found that Meiyu played an important role in the formation of flood in the Middle and Lower Reaches of the Yangtze River (MLRYR).

Then, the Ming and Qing Dynasties (1470–1850) were divided into three periods of strong solar radiation and three periods of weak solar radiation. It was found that during the periods of strong solar radiation, the frequency of strong Meiyu events was significantly higher than that during the periods of weak solar radiation in the reconstructed precipitation data and model simulations. This was related to the stronger Western Pacific Subtropical High and the stronger blocking high in middle-high latitude during the period of strong solar radiation.

See the article:

Wang L, Ning L, Chen K, Yan M, Liu J, Liu Z, Qin Y, Xue J, Li C. 2023. Influence and mechanism of solar radiation intensity on the interdecadal variability of strong Meiyu events during historical periods. Science China Earth Sciences, 66(2): 408–416, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-021-9952-0

https://www.sciengine.com/SCES/doi/10.1007/s11430-021-9952-0

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JOURNAL

Science China Earth Sciences

DOI

10.1007/s11430-021-9952-0 

Time series of summer precipitation anomalies in the MLRYR reconstructed from IGGPRE (a) and RAP (b) data from 1470 to 1850, and time series (c) of total solar radiation flux in summer. 

The abscissa of the red dashed line is 1608, the yellow shading represents the period of weak solar radiation, the purple shading represents the period of strong solar radiation, and the gray dashed line is the plus or minus two standard deviation line of each precipitation sequence.

Summer (JJA) geopotential height (unit: gpm) and wind anomaly spatial pattern (unit: m•s－1) at 500 hPa.  

(a), (d) Strong solar radiation period; (b), (e) weak solar radiation period; (c), (f) difference spatial pattern between strong and weak solar radiation periods. The vector represents the wind spatial pattern, the shading area is the anomaly value of the geopotential height at 500 hPa, and the dotted area represents the area where the 500 hPa geopotential height spatial pattern difference has passed the 90% significance test. The data used in ((a)–(c)) is the CESM-LME AF experimental data, and ((d)–(f))) is the CESM-LME SSI experimental data.

CREDIT

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

Intelligent metasurface robotics could provide robot with the God’s eye view in the human-robot alliance

Peer-Reviewed Publication

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

 

IMAGE: (A) SYSTEM LEVEL OVERVIEW. THE PIVOTAL HARDWARE INGREDIENT IS A PROGRAMMABLE METASURFACE WHICH IS CONTROLLED BY A SET OF INTELLIGENT ALGORITHMS, ENSURING A ROBUST AND STABLE WIRELESS CONNECTION BETWEEN THE ROBOTIC BRAIN AND MULTIPLE ROBOTIC LIMBS. (B) FOUR SELECTED SNAPSHOTS OF HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION RESULTS IN INDOOR ENVIRONMENT, WHERE THE I2MR SEE THE HUMAN. THERE IS A 60CM-THICK CONCRETE WALL BETWEEN THE ROOMS AND THE CORRIDOR. (C) ANALYSIS OF THE POWER CONSUMPTION ON THE ROBOT’S LIMB. view more 

CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

This study is led by Professor Lianlin Li (Peking University, China), Professor Tie Jun Cui (Southeast University, China) and Professor Philipp del Hougne (Rennes University, France). Intelligent robotics will become one of the core technologies in people daily lives of future smart societies. The team proposed the concept of intelligent indoor metasurface robotics, in which all sensing and computing are relegated to a centralized robotic brain endowed with the God’s eye, I2MR’s limbs (e.g. motorized vehicles and airborne drones) merely execute the wirelessly received instructions from the brain, and a secure wireless communication modality is utilized establish a preferential high-capacity wireless link between the I2MR’s brain and limbs.

“Despite the significant progress of intelligent robotics with different forms and characteristics in a wide range of applications, there are still challenges and opportunities to be addressed before the robots can see and understand a complex context to help humans in a future human-robot alliance. The challenges include but are not limited: 1) visual sensors embedded in robots have a limited field of view and can usually only operate in the line of sight, making them unsuitable for the acquisition of context awareness; 2) the visual sensors cannot operate in darkness and may be sensitive to skin colour; 3) by yielding human-interpretable data, the visual sensors tend to infringe humans’ privacy; 4) operating such sensors on the robotic edge can severely limit the cruise time of battery-powered mobile robots due to the power-hungry data acquisition and processing; and 5) the acceptable payload of mobile robots, especially airborne drones, is limited.” Li says.

The team sought to resolve above challenges by integrating the intelligent metasurface into robot. “The I2MR’s key is the centralized usage of an intelligent metasurface, which is capable of realizing low-latency and high-resolution three-dimensional imaging of humans, even beyond the line of sight (e.g. around corners and behind thick concrete walls), and thus I2MR is endowed with real-time and full-context awareness of its operating indoor environment. Thereby, the difficulties of sensing and computing arising in the conventional robotics could be fundamentally resolved.” Cui says.

The team implemented a proof-of-principle demonstration at around 2.4 GHz for the purpose of health-care assistance to a human inhabitant. In their implementation, the robot’s brain performs a complex sequence of sensing tasks to locate its mobile robotic limb as well as the human, and to recognize the human’s posture. The brain then implements a high-capacity communication link with the robotic limb and transmits the instructions. “The strategy could be extended to other frequencies and beyond for developing more intelligent robotics with more advanced functionalities” Li says.

The intelligent metasurfcace robot could open a new avenue for the conception of smart and wirelessly networked indoor robotics. The I2MR can be transposed to further important application areas of wirelessly networked robotic entities, such as the development of 6G wireless communications, green IoT, and digital twinning. “The intelligent metasurface robotic could be an emerging research direction involving various disciplines, and there are a lot of open questions to be carefully addressed in the future.” Li says.

###

See the article:

Intelligent indoor metasurface robotics

https://doi.org/10.1093/nsr/nwac266

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JOURNAL

National Science Review

DOI

10.1093/nsr/nwac266 

MAD SCIENTISTS INC.

Will future computers run on human brain cells?

Johns Hopkins researchers break ground on new field of ‘organoid intelligence’

Peer-Reviewed Publication

JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THOMAS HARTUNG WITH BRAIN ORGANOIDS IN HIS LAB AT THE JOHNS HOPKINS BLOOMBERG SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH view more 

CREDIT: WILL KIRK/JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

A “biocomputer” powered by human brain cells could be developed within our lifetime, according to Johns Hopkins University researchers who expect such technology to exponentially expand the capabilities of modern computing and create novel fields of study.

The team outlines their plan for “organoid intelligence” today in the journal Frontiers in Science.

“Computing and artificial intelligence have been driving the technology revolution but they are reaching a ceiling,” said Thomas Hartung, a professor of environmental health sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Whiting School of Engineering who is spearheading the work. “Biocomputing is an enormous effort of compacting computational power and increasing its efficiency to push past our current technological limits.”

For nearly two decades scientists have used tiny organoids, lab-grown tissue resembling fully grown organs, to experiment on kidneys, lungs, and other organs without resorting to human or animal testing. More recently Hartung and colleagues at Johns Hopkins have been working with brain organoids, orbs the size of a pen dot with neurons and other features that promise to sustain basic functions like learning and remembering.

“This opens up research on how the human brain works,” Hartung said. “Because you can start manipulating the system, doing things you cannot ethically do with human brains.”

Hartung began to grow and assemble brain cells into functional organoids in 2012 using cells from human skin samples reprogrammed into an embryonic stem cell-like state. Each organoid contains about 50,000 cells, about the size of a fruit fly’s nervous system. He now envisions building a futuristic computer with such brain organoids.

Computers that run on this “biological hardware” could in the next decade begin to alleviate energy-consumption demands of supercomputing that are becoming increasingly unsustainable, Hartung said. Even though computers process calculations involving numbers and data faster than humans, brains are much smarter in making complex logical decisions, like telling a dog from a cat.

“The brain is still unmatched by modern computers,” Hartung said. “Frontier, the latest supercomputer in Kentucky, is a $600 million, 6,800-square-feet installation. Only in June of last year, it exceeded for the first time the computational capacity of a single human brain — but using a million times more energy.”

It might take decades before organoid intelligence can power a system as smart as a mouse, Hartung said. But by scaling up production of brain organoids and training them with artificial intelligence, he foresees a future where biocomputers support superior computing speed, processing power, data efficiency, and storage capabilities.

“It will take decades before we achieve the goal of something comparable to any type of computer,” Hartung said. “But if we don't start creating funding programs for this, it will be much more difficult.”

Organoid intelligence could also revolutionize drug testing research for neurodevelopmental disorders and neurodegeneration, said Lena Smirnova, a Johns Hopkins assistant professor of environmental health and engineering who co-leads the investigations.

“We want to compare brain organoids from typically developed donors versus brain organoids from donors with autism,” Smirnova said. “The tools we are developing towards biological computing are the same tools that will allow us to understand changes in neuronal networks specific for autism, without having to use animals or to access patients, so we can understand the underlying mechanisms of why patients have these cognition issues and impairments.”

To assess the ethical implications of working with organoid intelligence, a diverse consortium of scientists, bioethicists, and members of the public have been embedded within the team.

Johns Hopkins authors included: Brian S. Caffo, David H. Gracias, Qi Huang, Itzy E. Morales Pantoja, Bohao Tang, Donald J. Zack, Cynthia A. Berlinicke, J. Lomax Boyd, Timothy DHarris, Erik C. Johnson, Jeffrey Kahn, Barton L. Paulhamus, Jesse Plotkin, Alexander S. Szalay, Joshua T. Vogelstein, and Paul F. Worley.

Other authors included: Brett J. Kagan, of Cortical Labs; Alysson R. Muotri, of the University of California San Diego; and Jens C. Schwamborn of University of Luxembourg.

IMAGES: Top: Thomas Hartung with brain organoids in his lab at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Credit: Will Kirk/Johns Hopkins University. Bottom: A close-up of a brain organoid. Credit: Jesse Plotkin/Johns Hopkins University. High resolution images available.

Magnified image of a brain organoid produced in Thomas Hartung’s lab, dyed to show neurons in magenta, cell nuclei in blue, and other supporting cells in red and green.

CREDIT

Jesse Plotkin/Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University news releases are available online, as is information for reporters. To arrange an interview with a Johns Hopkins expert, contact a media representative listed above. Find more Johns Hopkins experts on the Experts Hub, and more Johns Hopkins stories on the Hub.

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Science

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Human tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

Organoid intelligence: a new biocomputing frontier

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Feb-2023

Scientists unveil plan to create 

biocomputers powered by human 

brain cells

Despite AI’s impressive track record, its computational power pales in comparison with a human brain. Now, scientists unveil a revolutionary path to drive computing forward: organoid intelligence, where lab-grown brain organoids act as biological hardware

Peer-Reviewed Publication

FRONTIERS

 

IMAGE: INFOGRAPHIC: ORGANOID INTELLIGENCE: THE NEW FRONTIER IN BIOCOMPUTING view more 

CREDIT: FRONTIERS/JOHN HOPKINS UNIVERSITY

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been inspired by the human brain. This approach proved highly successful: AI boasts impressive achievements – from diagnosing medical conditions to composing poetry. Still, the original model continues to outperform machines in many ways. This is why, for example, we can ‘prove our humanity’ with trivial image tests online. What if instead of trying to make AI more brain-like, we went straight to the source? 

Scientists across multiple disciplines are working to create revolutionary biocomputers where three-dimensional cultures of brain cells, called brain organoids, serve as biological hardware. They describe their roadmap for realizing this vision in the journal Frontiers in Science.  

“We call this new interdisciplinary field ‘organoid intelligence’ (OI),” said Prof Thomas Hartung of Johns Hopkins University. “A community of top scientists has gathered to develop this technology, which we believe will launch a new era of fast, powerful, and efficient biocomputing.”   

What are brain organoids, and why would they make good computers?  

Brain organoids are a type of lab-grown cell-culture. Even though brain organoids aren’t ‘mini brains’, they share key aspects of brain function and structure such as neurons and other brain cells that are essential for cognitive functions like learning and memory. Also, whereas most cell cultures are flat, organoids have a three-dimensional structure. This increases the culture's cell density 1,000-fold, meaning that neurons can form many more connections.   

But even if brain organoids are a good imitation of brains, why would they make good computers? After all, aren't computers smarter and faster than brains?  

"While silicon-based computers are certainly better with numbers, brains are better at learning,” Hartung explained. “For example, AlphaGo [the AI that beat the world’s number one Go player in 2017] was trained on data from 160,000 games. A person would have to play five hours a day for more than 175 years to experience these many games.”  

Brains are not only superior learners, they are also more energy efficient. For instance, the amount of energy spent training AlphaGo is more than is needed to sustain an active adult for a decade. 

“Brains also have an amazing capacity to store information, estimated at 2,500TB,” Hartung added. “We’re reaching the physical limits of silicon computers because we cannot pack more transistors into a tiny chip. But the brain is wired completely differently. It has about 100bn neurons linked through over 1015 connection points. It’s an enormous power difference compared to our current technology.” 

What would organoid intelligence bio computers look like? 

According to Hartung, current brain organoids need to be scaled-up for OI. "They are too small, each containing about 50,000 cells. For OI, we would need to increase this number to 10 million,” he explained. 

In parallel, the authors are also developing technologies to communicate with the organoids: in other words, to send them information and read out what they’re ‘thinking’. The authors plan to adapt tools from various scientific disciplines, such as bioengineering and machine learning, as well as engineer new stimulation and recording devices.  

“We developed a brain-computer interface device that is a kind of an EEG cap for organoids, which we presented in an article published last August. It is a flexible shell that is densely covered with tiny electrodes that can both pick up signals from the organoid, and transmit signals to it,” said Hartung.  

The authors envision that eventually OI would integrate a wide range of stimulation and recording tools. These will orchestrate interactions across networks of interconnected organoids that implement more complex computations.  

Organoid intelligence could help prevent and treat neurological conditions 

OI’s promise goes beyond computing and into medicine. Thanks to a groundbreaking technique developed by Noble Laureates John Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka, brain organoids can be produced from adult tissues. This means that scientists can develop personalized brain organoids from skin samples of patients suffering from neural disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease. They can then run multiple tests to investigate how genetic factors, medicines, and toxins influence these conditions. 

“With OI, we could study the cognitive aspects of neurological conditions as well,” Hartung said. “For example, we could compare memory formation in organoids derived from healthy people and from Alzheimer’s patients, and try to repair relative deficits. We could also use OI to test whether certain substances, such as pesticides, cause memory or learning problems.” 

Taking ethical considerations into account 

Creating human brain organoids that can learn, remember, and interact with their environment raises complex ethical questions. For example, could they develop consciousness, even in a rudimentary form? Could they experience pain or suffering? And what rights would people have concerning brain organoids made from their cells?   

The authors are acutely aware of these issues. “A key part of our vision is to develop OI in an ethical and socially responsible manner,” Hartung said. “For this reason, we have partnered with ethicists from the very beginning to establish an ‘embedded ethics’ approach. All ethical issues will be continuously assessed by teams made up of scientists, ethicists, and the public, as the research evolves.” 

How far are we from the first organoid intelligence? 

Even though OI is still in its infancy, a recently-published study by one of the article’s co-authors – Dr Brett Kagan of the Cortical Labs – provides proof of concept. His team showed that a normal, flat brain cell culture can learn to play the video game Pong.  

“Their team is already testing this with brain organoids,” Hartung added. “And I would say that replicating this experiment with organoids already fulfills the basic definition of OI. From here on, it’s just a matter of building the community, the tools, and the technologies to realize OI’s full potential,” he concluded.   

 

A magnified image of a lab-grown brain organoid with fluorescent labeling for different cell types. (Pink - neurons; red - oligodendrocytes; green - astrocytes; blue - all cell nuclei)

CREDIT

Thomas Hartung, Johns Hopkins University

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JOURNAL

Frontiers in Science

DOI

10.3389/fsci.2023.1017235 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Lab-produced tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

The new frontier in biocomputing and intelligence in-a-dish

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

28-Feb-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare a potential conflict of interest and state it below: T.H. is named inventor on a patent by Johns Hopkins University on the production of brain organoids, which is licensed to AxoSim,New Orleans, LA, USA, and receives royalty shares. T.H. and L.S. consult AxoSim. J.C.S. is named inventor on a patent by the University of Luxembourg on the production of midbrain organoids, which is licensed to OrganoTherapeutics SARL, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg. J.C.S is also co-founder and shareholder of OrganoTherapeutics SARL. A.R.M. is a co-founder and has equity interest in TISMOO, a company dedicated to genetic analysis and human brain organogenesis, focusing on therapeutic applications customized for autism spectrum disorders and other neurological disorders origin genetics. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by the University of California, San Diego, in accordance with its conflict of interest policies. B.J.K. is an inventor on patents for technology related this paper along with being employed and holding shares in Cortical Labs Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia. No specific funding or other incentives were provided for involvement in this publication.