Lamprey brain atlas developed by Chinese scientists provides new insights into how vertebrate brains evolved over 500 million years.
KUNMING: Chinese researchers have created the world’s first three-dimensional lamprey brain atlas, offering an unprecedented look into the origins and evolution of vertebrate brains. The breakthrough study provides fresh evidence about how complex brain structures emerged and diversified over hundreds of millions of years.
The research was led by scientists at the Kunming Institute of Zoology under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, working alongside teams from BGI Life Science Research Institute and Liaoning Normal University. Using advanced spatial single-cell technologies, the team mapped the entire brain of the lamprey, an ancient jawless vertebrate often described as a living fossil.
Lampreys separated from the ancestors of jawed vertebrates, including humans, around 450 million years ago. Because their basic anatomical features have remained largely unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, scientists consider them valuable for studying the ancestral state of vertebrate evolution.
According to lead researcher Su Bing, the newly developed lamprey brain atlas enables scientists to better understand the origin, diversification and underlying mechanisms of vertebrate brain development. The detailed map reveals how different brain regions are organised and how genes are expressed across various cell types.
Researchers compared the lamprey brain with that of a mouse and discovered striking similarities despite their vast evolutionary separation. Several brain regions showed conserved functions and gene expression patterns. The study also identified similarities in olfactory bulb development, hindbrain organisation and key neural cell types.
The findings suggest that the common ancestor of vertebrates already possessed a surprisingly sophisticated brain with distinct regions and complex molecular activity. This challenges some previous assumptions about the simplicity of early vertebrate nervous systems.
Scientists believe the lamprey brain atlas will serve as an important reference for future research into brain evolution. As spatial omics technologies continue to advance, the resource is expected to help researchers uncover how complex vertebrate brains developed and adapted across geological timescales.
