CuriosiTEA Journal Club 

Story by CuriosiTEA JC Team Original Research Article: Faravelli, Antón-Bolaños et al., Nature, 2026.Journal link: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10877-x Scientists grew tiny models of the human brain for more than five years. These models are called organoids. They are made from human stem cells and grown in a dish. The organoids did not stop developing after a few months. They kept getting older, and the older cells even seemed to remember how much time had passed. Th

Story by CuriosiTEA JC Team Original Research Article: Han et al., Nature Methods, 2022. Journal link: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-022-01453-y When COVID-19 spread around the world, scientists needed a safe way to study it. So they grew organoids (i.e. tiny models of human organs) in the lab from human cells. With these little models, they could watch how the virus affect different organs and test medicines and vaccines. Organoids are also animal free, because the

​Story by CuriosiTEA JC Team Original Research Article: Lee et al., The Journal of Clinical Investigation, 2025. Journal link: https://www.jci.org/articles/view/175562; https://www.jci.org/articles/view/188708 Scientists found that an ATF6 mutation (broken gene) causes both vision loss and hearing loss. People already knew this gene mattered for the eyes. A broken ATF6 can cause achromatopsia, which means a person can't see color. But this study found the same gene also mat