{"id":247297,"date":"2026-11-13T23:11:39","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T05:11:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/evolution-found-another-way-to-build-a-primate-brain"},"modified":"2026-11-13T23:11:39","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T05:11:39","slug":"evolution-found-another-way-to-build-a-primate-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/11\/evolution-found-another-way-to-build-a-primate-brain","title":{"rendered":"Evolution found another way to build a primate brain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What makes the human brain so much larger and more complex than the brains of many other mammals? Scientists have long sought clues in our DNA. Some discoveries show how genetic changes enable the developing brain to produce more cells. Others help explain how long those cells can continue to multiply.<\/p>\n<p>Now, researchers in Taiwan and Japan have uncovered another piece of the evolutionary puzzle: evolution may also have altered the instructions that determine which types of brain-building cells are produced. The research is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.aed3856\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal Science Advances.<\/p>\n<p>Led by researchers at National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University (NYCU) and Academia Sinica, alongside collaborators at Kyoto University, the study identifies a small region of DNA that helps control the production of specialized neural stem cells. The findings suggest that evolution can open up new developmental possibilities without necessarily creating entirely new genes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What makes the human brain so much larger and more complex than the brains of many other mammals? Scientists have long sought clues in our DNA. Some discoveries show how genetic changes enable the developing brain to produce more cells. Others help explain how long those cells can continue to multiply. Now, researchers in Taiwan [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,385,412,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-247297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-evolution","category-genetics","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}