Medial Ganglionic Eminence and Cortical Organoids Model Human Brain Development and Interneuron Migration [RNA-seq2]

Organoid techniques provide unique platforms to model brain development and neurological disorders. While organoids recapitulating corticogenesis were established, a system modeling human medial ganglionic eminence (MGE) development, a critical ventral brain domain producing cortical interneurons and related lineages, remains to be developed. Here, we describe a system to generate MGE or cortex-specific organoids from human pluripotent stem cells. These organoids recapitulate the developments of MGE and cortex domains respectively. Population and single-cell transcriptomic profiling revealed transcriptional dynamics and lineage productions during MGE and cortical organoids development. Chromatin accessibility landscapes were found to be involved in this process. Furthermore, MGE and cortical organoids generated physiologically functional neurons and neuronal networks. Finally, we applied fusion organoids as a model to investigate human interneuron migration. Together, our study provides a new platform for generating domain-specific brain organoids, for modeling human interneuron migration, and offers deeper insight into molecular dynamics during human brain development.