Question: If you were to study a single brain cell, how would you get it? Would it be from an animal with a closeley related brain structure? (e.g. a pig)

Ian Hands-Portman answered on 17 Mar 2014:

For single cells we just grow them – you can buy tubes of cells from various companies and grown them in culture dishes. They’re cells that at some point must have been taking from a living thing but have been grown artificially for years. Because we know their genetics well and understand better what they need to grow, it’s often rat or mouse cells in the culture.

We can buy real human cells if we need them – they’re just very expensive, to get them in the first place – someone who’s given their body to science has to die in exactly the right hospital and a piece of their brain extracted within a few minutes.