Indeed, we observed increased proliferation of human NSPCs in adherent monolayer cultures and in brain organoids after experimentally increasing the levels of a single ribosomal protein, RPL38, that has been previously associated with HOX gene regulation and cell division in cancer cells (Ji and Zhang, 2020; Kondrashov et al., 2011; Xue et al., 2015). The gene discussed is RPL38; the disease is cancer.