By JAMES GORMAN Worldwide, 100,000 people have electrical implants in their brains to treat the involuntary movements associated with Parkinson’s disease, and scientists are experimenting with the technique for depression and other disorders. But today’s so-called deep brain stimulation only treats — it does not monitor its own effectiveness, partly because complex ailments like depression do not have defined biological signatures. The federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as Darpa, announced Thursday that it intended to spend more than $70 million over five years to jump to the next level of brain implants, either by improving deep brain stimulation or by developing new technology. Justin Sanchez, Darpa program manager, said that for scientists now, “there is no technology that can acquire signals that can tell them precisely what is going on with the brain.” And so, he said, Darpa is “trying to change the game on how we approach these kinds of problems.” The new program, called Systems-Based Neurotechnology and Understanding for the Treatment of Neuropsychological Illnesses, is part of an Obama administration brain initiative, announced earlier this year, intended to promote innovative basic neuroscience. Participants in the initiative include Darpa, as well as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. The announcement of Darpa’s goal is the first indication of how that research agency will participate in the initiative. The money is expected to be divided among different teams, and research proposals are now being sought. Darpa’s project is partly inspired by the needs of combat veterans who suffer from mental and physical conditions, and is the first to invest directly in researching human illness as part of the brain initiative. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Depression; Parkinsons
Link ID: 18835 - Posted: 10.26.2013

By James Gallagher Health and science reporter, BBC News The mocked "obesity excuse" of being born with a slow metabolism is actually true for some people, say researchers. A team at the University of Cambridge has found the first proof that mutated DNA does indeed slow metabolism. The researchers say fewer than one in 100 people are affected and are often severely obese by early childhood. The findings, published in the journal Cell, may lead to new obesity treatments even for people without the mutation. Scientists at the Institute of Metabolic Science, in Cambridge, knew that mice born without a section of DNA, a gene called KSR2, gained weight more easily. But they did not know what effect it may be having in people, so they analysed the DNA of 2,101 severely obese patients. Some had mutated versions of KSR2. It had a twin effect of increasing their appetite while their slowing metabolism. "You would be hungry and wanting to eat a lot, you would not want to move because of a slower metabolism and would probably also develop type 2 diabetes at a young age," lead researcher Prof Sadaf Farooqi told the BBC. She added: "It slows the ability to burn calories and that's important as it's a new explanation for obesity." BBC © 2013

Keyword: Obesity; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18834 - Posted: 10.26.2013

By NELSON GRAVES Six years ago I suffered a stroke that forced me to relearn how to walk. The other day I ran a half-marathon. Strokes strike with stealth, but for me it was not entirely a surprise. During a physical in Milan in 2007, the doctor listened to my heart, then ordered an electrocardiogram. “Fair enough,” I reassured myself. “I’m 52 years old, and it’s no use taking anything for granted.” The nurse furrowed her brow as she studied the first read-out, then conducted a second, longer EKG. I put my shirt back on and returned to the doctor’s office. “I have some news for you,” he said. “You have atrial fibrillation. AF for short.” He wrote down the two words and explained they meant an irregular beating of the heart’s upper chambers. “It’s not life threatening. But it increases the risk of stroke six-fold.” I was too young to have a stroke. “I work 12-hour days, play squash three times a week and haven’t missed a day of work in 24 years,” I said. My attention piqued, I could now hear my heart’s irregular beat as I lay my head on my pillow. That must explain the dizziness when I get up at night to go to the bathroom. Or the fatigue at the end of a squash match. So when, on a September afternoon in Tokyo, my head began to spin wildly and I could hardly speak, I knew what was happening. After an ambulance ride to the hospital and an M.R.I., I heard the doctor say, “You’ve had a cerebral embolism.” That would be a stroke. Copyright 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 18833 - Posted: 10.26.2013

by Tina Hesman Saey BOSTON — A variant in a gene involved in breaking down chemicals in smoke triples a smoker’s risk of multiple sclerosis, a study shows. Smoking increases by 30 to 50 percent a person’s risk of multiple sclerosis, a disease in which the immune system attacks a waxy coating around nerve cells. Scientists don’t know exactly how smoking contributes to the disease. Farren Briggs of the University of California, Berkeley and his colleagues searched DNA of thousands of people in Northern California, Norway and Sweden for genetic variants associated with both smoking and multiple sclerosis. The team found hundreds of variants in three genes involved in breaking down chemicals found in smoke, Briggs said October 24 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics. In particular, people who smoke and who have two copies of a variant in the NAT1 gene have a risk of getting MS that is three times higher than that of smokers without the variant. For nonsmokers, the variant doesn’t increase MS risk. Citations F.B.S. Briggs et al. NAT1 in an important genetic effect modifier of tobacco smoke exposure in multiple sclerosis susceptibility in 5,453 individuals. American Society of Human Genetics annual meeting, Boston, October 24, 2013. Further Reading N. Seppa. Old drug may have new trick. Science News. Vol. 184, November 2, 2013, p. 16. N. Seppa. Black women may have highest multiple sclerosis rates. Science News. Vol. 183, June 15, 2013, p. 15. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Multiple Sclerosis; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18832 - Posted: 10.26.2013

Kerri Smith Jack Gallant perches on the edge of a swivel chair in his lab at the University of California, Berkeley, fixated on the screen of a computer that is trying to decode someone's thoughts. On the left-hand side of the screen is a reel of film clips that Gallant showed to a study participant during a brain scan. And on the right side of the screen, the computer program uses only the details of that scan to guess what the participant was watching at the time. Anne Hathaway's face appears in a clip from the film Bride Wars, engaged in heated conversation with Kate Hudson. The algorithm confidently labels them with the words 'woman' and 'talk', in large type. Another clip appears — an underwater scene from a wildlife documentary. The program struggles, and eventually offers 'whale' and 'swim' in a small, tentative font. “This is a manatee, but it doesn't know what that is,” says Gallant, talking about the program as one might a recalcitrant student. They had trained the program, he explains, by showing it patterns of brain activity elicited by a range of images and film clips. His program had encountered large aquatic mammals before, but never a manatee. Groups around the world are using techniques like these to try to decode brain scans and decipher what people are seeing, hearing and feeling, as well as what they remember or even dream about. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Vision; Brain imaging
Link ID: 18831 - Posted: 10.24.2013

By Tori Rodriguez The digestive tract and the brain are crucially linked, according to mounting evidence showing that diet and gut bacteria are able to influence our behavior, thoughts and mood. Now researchers have found evidence of bacterial translocation, or “leaky gut,” among people with depression. Normally the digestive system is surrounded by an impermeable wall of cells. Certain behaviors and medical conditions can compromise this wall, allowing toxic substances and bacteria to enter the bloodstream. In a study published in the May issue of Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, approximately 35 percent of depressed participants showed signs of leaky gut, based on blood tests. The scientists do not yet know how leaky gut relates to depression, although earlier work offers some hints. Displaced bacteria can activate autoimmune responses and inflammation, which are known to be associated with the onset of depression, lower mood and fatigue. “Leaky gut may maintain increased inflammation in depressed patients,” which could exacerbate the symptoms of depression if not treated, says Michael Maes, a research psychiatrist with affiliations in Australia and Thailand and an author of the paper. Currently leaky gut is treated with a combination of glutamine, N-acetylcysteine and zinc—believed to have anti-inflammatory or antioxidant properties—when behavioral and dietary modifications fail. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Obesity
Link ID: 18830 - Posted: 10.24.2013

Amanda Mascarelli Duplication of a single gene — and too much of the corresponding protein in brain cells — causes mice to have seizures and display manic-like behaviour, a study has found. But a widely used drug reversed the symptoms, suggesting that it could also help some people with hyperactivity who do not respond to common treatments. Smooth functioning at the synapses, the junctions between brain cells, is crucial to functions that control everything from social etiquette to everyday decision-making. It is increasingly thought that some neuropsychiatric disorders are caused by function of the synapses going awry1, and indeed researchers have found that neuropsychiatric conditions such as schizophrenia and autism can sometimes be traced to missing, mutated or duplicated copies of SHANK32, a gene that encodes one of the 'architectural' proteins that help to ensure that messages are relayed properly between cells. Some people with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), Asperger's syndrome or schizophrenia have an extra copy of a wider region of DNA that contains SHANK33. To explore the role of SHANK3, Huda Zoghbi, a neurogeneticist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, and her colleagues created mice with duplicate copies of the gene. “The mouse was remarkably hyperactive, running around like mad,” says Zoghbi. But the animals did not respond to stimulant medications typically used to treat ADHD. Instead, their hyperactivity grew much worse. “That’s when we knew this was not typical ADHD,” says Zoghbi. The study is published today in Nature4. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: ADHD; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18829 - Posted: 10.24.2013

Stroke deaths and illnesses are likely to continue shifting younger, global research suggests. In the Global and Regional Burden of Stroke in 1999-2010 study published in Thursday's issue of the medical journal The Lancet, researchers take a comprehensive look at stroke rates by country and region. "Stroke burden worldwide continues to increase," Prof. Valery Feigin, director of the National Institute for Stroke and Applied Neurosciences at AUT University in New Zealand said in an interview. "It's increasing at increased pace, more than we expected, disproportionately affecting low-to middle-income countries." The proportion of stroke in people younger than 65 is substantial, Feigin's team said. More than 83,000 children and youths aged 20 years and younger are affected by stroke annually. Feigin said the epidemic of obesity, and Type 2 diabetes in children and young people is increasing worldwide, which will be important risk factors for stroke 20 or 30 years down the road. If the trends in low-income and middle-income countries continue, by 2030 there will be almost 12 million stroke deaths and 70 million stroke survivors worldwide, the researchers projected. More than 90 per cent of strokes are preventable through lifestyle changes such as improving diet, quitting smoking, reducing salt and alcohol intake, increasing physical activity and managing stress, Feigin said.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 18828 - Posted: 10.24.2013

By Gary Stix The Obama administration’s neuroscience initiative highlights new technologies to better understand the workings of brain circuits on both a small and large scale. Various creatures, from roundworms to mice, will be centerpieces of that program because the human brain is too complex—and the ethical issues too intricate—to start analyzing the actual human organ in any meaningful way. But what if there were already a means to figure out how the brain wires itself up and, in turn, to use this knowledge to study what happens in various neurological disorders of early life? Reports in scientific journals have started to trickle in on the way stem cells can spontaneously organize themselves into complex brain tissue—what some researchers have dubbed mini-brains. Christopher A. Walsh, Bullard Professor of pediatrics and neurology at Harvard Medical School, talked to Scientific American about the importance of just such work for understanding brain development and neurological disease. (Also, check out the Perspective Walsh did for Science on this topic, along with Byoung-il Bae.) In order to be able to understand the way the brain solves this tremendously complex problem of wiring itself up, we need to be able to study it rigorously in the laboratory. We need some sort of model. We can’t just take humans and put them under the microscope, so we have to find some way of modeling the brain. The mouse has been tremendously useful for understanding brain wiring and how cells in the brain form. And the mouse will continue to be very useful. The mouse is particularly useful in studying cellular effects of particular genes, but, as we get smarter and smarter about what the problems are, we’re increasingly able to think, not about things that we share with mice, but the differences that distinguish us from mice. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Brain imaging
Link ID: 18827 - Posted: 10.24.2013

People with Parkinson's disease are dancing at the National Ballet School as part of a study into how learning dance moves can change the brain. Anecdotally, learning to dance seems to improve motor skills in the short-term among people with Parkinson's disease, a neurological disorder that interferes with gait and balance. As part of a 12-week program, 20 people with Parkinson's disease are taking weekly dance classes at the National Ballet School in Toronto. The classes began in September. The research team is led by neuroscientist Prof. Joseph DeSouza of York University's Faculty of Health and National Ballet School instructor Rachel Bar. The volunteers are also getting a series of functional MRI scans to help researchers understand how the brain reacts and learns. "We know that balance can improve and gait can improve and even there's social benefits but we want to see why that's happening, how is it happening? To do that, we're looking inside the brain," Bar said. People aren't able to dance in scanner but they are asked to visualize the dance while listening to the accompanying music. "If you visualize a dance, theoretically you're using almost all the same neural circuitry as if you were doing it," DeDouza said. The hypothesis is that the brain of someone with Parkinson's may develop new paths around damaged areas if stimulated by the movement of dance. © CBC 2013

Keyword: Parkinsons
Link ID: 18826 - Posted: 10.23.2013

By Phil Plait Thanks to my evil twin Richard Wiseman (a UK psychologist who specializes in studying the ways we perceive things around us, and how easily we can be fooled), I saw this masterful illusion video that will keep you guessing on what’s real and what isn’t. It’s only two minutes long, so give it a gander: Cool, eh? The reason you got fooled, at least twice, is that we get confused when our three-dimensional world is translated into two dimensions. We perceive distance for nearby objects using binocular vision, which depends on the angles between our eyes and the objects. If you create a picture of an object that is carefully distorted to match those changing angles, you can fool the brain into thinking it’s seeing a real object when in fact it’s a flat representation. We’re actually very good at taking subtle cues and turning them into three-dimensional interpretations. However, because of that very sensitivity, it’s easy to throw a monkey in the wrench, messing up our perception. Still don’t believe me? Then watch this, and if it doesn’t melt your brain, I can no longer help you. Our brains are very, very easy to fool. I’ll note that the way we see color is very easy to trick, too. I wrote an article about a fantastic, astonishing color illusion back in 2009, and it spurred a lot of arguments in the comments, even when I showed clearly how it works. Amazing. © 2013 The Slate Group, LLC

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 18825 - Posted: 10.23.2013

Special Note to Teachers: The content of the following lesson plans compares the “normal” brain to a “zombie” brain. Zombies are not real but there are plenty of diseases that effect real people and students may have people in their lives who have suffered because of them. The following lessons about neuroscience have been inspired by the book, “The Zombie Autopsies”, written by Steven C. Schlozman, M.D., and are intended to compliment it. “The Zombie Autopsies” was inspired by George Romero’s 1968 cult-classic horror film “Night of the Living Dead”. These original lessons build upon each other and have an accompanying plot line where the world is fighting a zombie apocalypse and the best and the brightest young people are being trained as medical students – with a specialty in neuroscience – with the hopes that they will be able to provide a cure to this terrible epidemic and save humanity. For a richer experience have the students read the book in class and as homework (see suggested reading schedule) along with the class activities. Although the materials are organized as a unit, lessons can be used as stand-alone or can be shaped to fit the needs of you and your students regarding time and content. For example, Lesson 3 is perfect for the day of Halloween. © 2013 MacNeil-Lehrer Productions

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18824 - Posted: 10.23.2013

When frogs croak, the fringe-lipped bat, Trachops cirrhosus, listens. The bats use the sounds to track and feed on amphibians and to share dining tips with neighbors. In a new study, Patricia Jones of the University of Texas at Austin and colleagues trained a few frog-eating bats to associate a cell phone ringtone with food. Some of the bats reliably got food when they heard the phone ring. Others did not. The bats that failed to get food using their own cues paid more attention to new ones that their fellow mammals shared. Social learning becomes much more important if a bat is unsuccessful at finding food, the scientists report October 22 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Observing how bats forage alone and together may help scientists understand the way new hunting behaviors spread through animal populations. It may also give insight to animals’ potential for cultivating culture, the authors suggest. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013.

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 18823 - Posted: 10.23.2013

Katherine Harmon Courage An infant's innate sense for numbers predicts how their mathematical aptitude will develop years later, a team of US researchers has found. Babies can spot if a set of objects increases or decreases in number — for instance, if the number of dots on a screen grows, even when dot size, colour and arrangement also change. But until recently, researchers could generally only determine the number sense of groups of babies, thus ruling out the ability to correlate this with later mathematics skills in individuals. In 2010, Elizabeth Brannon, a neuroscientist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, and her colleagues demonstrated that they could test and track infants' number sense over time1. To do this, six-month-old babies are presented with two screens. One shows a constant number of dots, such as eight, changing in appearance, and the other also shows changing dots but presents different numbers of them — eight sometimes and 16 other times, for instance. An infant who has a good primitive number sense will spend more time gazing at the screen that presents the changing number of dots. In the latest work, which is published in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences2, Brannon's team took a group of 48 children who had been tested at six months of age and retested them three years later, using the same dot test but also other standard maths tests for preschoolers — including some that assessed the ability to count, to tell which of two numbers is larger and to do basic calculations. © 2013 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Attention; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 18822 - Posted: 10.22.2013

By Scott Barry Kaufman One of the longest standing assumptions about the nature of human intelligence has just been seriously challenged. According to the traditional “investment” theory, intelligence can be classified into two main categories: fluid and crystallized. Differences in fluid intelligence are thought to reflect novel, on-the-spot reasoning, whereas differences in crystallized intelligence are thought to reflect previously acquired knowledge and skills. According to this theory, crystallized intelligence develops through the investment of fluid intelligence in a particular body of knowledge. As far as genetics is concerned, this story has a very clear prediction: In the general population– in which people differ in their educational experiences– the heritability of crystallized intelligence is expected to be lower than the heritability of fluid intelligence. This traditional theory assumes that fluid intelligence is heavily influenced by genes and relatively fixed, whereas crystallized intelligence is more heavily dependent on acquired skills and learning opportunities. But is this story really true? In a new study, Kees-Jan Kan and colleagues analyzed the results of 23 independent twin studies conducted with representative samples, yielding a total sample of 7,852 people. They investigated how heritability coefficients vary across specific cognitive abilities. Importantly, they assessed the “Cultural load” of various cognitive abilities by taking the average percentage of test items that were adjusted when the test was adapted for use in 13 different countries. © 2013 Scientific American

Keyword: Intelligence; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 18821 - Posted: 10.22.2013

By Consumer Reports, You wake up tired after a full night’s sleep. Maybe you’ve become a bit forgetful, and you struggle to stay awake at work or behind the wheel. The problem might be obstructive sleep apnea, an often overlooked condition that has increased sharply in the past 20 years. In the United States, more than 40 percent of men and 28 percent of women between the ages of 50 and 70 experience obstructed breathing while asleep, according to researchers whose work was published online in April by the American Journal of Epidemiology. About 17 percent of the men and 9 percent of the women have cases serious enough to meet the Medicare criteria for a sleep apnea diagnosis. But even milder cases can affect your health. Obstructive sleep apnea causes the muscles and tissues in the lower throat to collapse, blocking the flow of air to the lungs during sleep. A person with obstructive sleep apnea may stop breathing, typically for 20 to 25 seconds or for as long as two minutes. The amount of carbon dioxide in the blood rises, triggering an alarm in the brain that stirs the sleeper to resume breathing. That cycle can repeat itself dozens of times an hour throughout the night, preventing the sleeper from reaching the restorative stages of deep sleep. Upon awakening, he or she usually has no recollection of those events. Overweight men are the most frequently affected because they tend to have a throat with bulkier soft tissue and fat deposits, but women and people of normal weight also develop sleep apnea. Loud snoring can be a warning sign, especially if you learn from a bed partner or roommate that you gasp for breath or choke while you are asleep. High blood pressure and heart-rhythm abnormalities are also red flags, especially if you take antihypertensive medication and still have trouble keeping blood pressure under control. Waking up with a headache may also signal the condition. © 1996-2013 The Washington Post

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 18820 - Posted: 10.22.2013

by NPR Staff Soon you'll be able to direct the path of a cockroach with a smartphone and the swipe of your finger. Greg Gage and his colleagues at Backyard Brains have developed a device called the that lets you control the path of an insect. It may make you squirm, but Gage says the device could inspire a new generation of neuroscientists. "The sharpest kids amongst us are probably going into other fields right now. And so we're kind of in the dark ages when it comes to neuroscience," he tells NPR's Arun Rath. He wants to get kids interested in neuroscience early enough to guide them toward that career path. And a cyborg cockroach might be the inspiration. "The neurons in the insects are very, very similar to the neurons inside the human brain," Gage says. "It's a beautiful way to just really understand what's happening inside your brain by looking at these little insects." The idea was spawned by a device the Backyard Brain-iacs developed called , which is capable of amplifying real living neurons. Insert a small wire into a cockroach's antennae, and you can hear the sound of actual neurons. "Lining the inside of the cockroach are these neurons that are picking up touch or vibration sensing, chemical sensing," Gage says. "They use it like a nose or a large tongue, their antennas, and they use it to sort of navigate the world. "So when you put a small wire inside of there, you can actually pick up the information as it's being encoded and being sent to the brain." With the RoboRoach device and smartphone app, you can interact with the antennae to influence the insect's behavior. ©2013 NPR

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 18819 - Posted: 10.22.2013

by Susan Milius Your calamari, it turns out, may have come from a temporary transvestite with rainbows in its armpits. Well, not armpits, but spots just below where the fins flare out. “Finpits,” cell biologist Daniel DeMartini nicknamed them. He and his colleagues have documented unusual color-change displays in female California market squid, popular in restaurants. Squids, octopuses and cuttlefishes are nature’s iPads, changing their living pixels at will. DeMartini, of the University of California, Santa Barbara, saw so many sunset shimmers, blink-of-an-eye blackouts and other marvels in California’s Doryteuthis opalescens that it took him a while to notice that only females shimmered the finpit stripe. It shows up now and then during life, and reliably for about 24 hours after decapitation, DeMartini found. The squid are color-blind, and what prompts their display is known only to them. But the researchers have figured out how it works. The squid make rainbows when color-change cells called iridocytes lose water. Other kinds of color-change cells work their magic via pigments, but not iridocytes. “If you take a bunch of iridocyte cells in red, blue, green or yellow and you grind them up, then you wouldn’t see any color,” DeMartini says. Instead, little stacks of protein plates inside the cells turn colorful only when water rushes out of the stack. How closely the plates snug together determines whether the stack looks blue, scarlet or anything in between. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2013

Keyword: Vision; Sexual Behavior
Link ID: 18818 - Posted: 10.22.2013

By MAGGIE KOERTH-BAKER Between the fall of 2011 and the spring of 2012, people across the United States suddenly found themselves unable to get their hands on A.D.H.D. medication. Low-dose generics were particularly in short supply. There were several factors contributing to the shortage, but the main cause was that supply was suddenly being outpaced by demand. The number of diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder has ballooned over the past few decades. Before the early 1990s, fewer than 5 percent of school-age kids were thought to have A.D.H.D. Earlier this year, data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 11 percent of children ages 4 to 17 had at some point received the diagnosis — and that doesn’t even include first-time diagnoses in adults. (Full disclosure: I’m one of them.) That amounts to millions of extra people receiving regular doses of stimulant drugs to keep neurological symptoms in check. For a lot of us, the diagnosis and subsequent treatments — both behavioral and pharmaceutical — have proved helpful. But still: Where did we all come from? Were that many Americans always pathologically hyperactive and unable to focus, and only now are getting the treatment they need? Probably not. Of the 6.4 million kids who have been given diagnoses of A.D.H.D., a large percentage are unlikely to have any kind of physiological difference that would make them more distractible than the average non-A.D.H.D. kid. It’s also doubtful that biological or environmental changes are making physiological differences more prevalent. Instead, the rapid increase in people with A.D.H.D. probably has more to do with sociological factors — changes in the way we school our children, in the way we interact with doctors and in what we expect from our kids. © 2013 The New York Times Company

Keyword: ADHD; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 18817 - Posted: 10.21.2013

Maggie Fox NBC News Every cell in your body has a little clock ticking away in it, researchers reported on Sunday. And while most of you is aging in a coordinated way, odd anomalies that have the researchers curious: Your heart may be “younger” than the rest of your tissues, and a woman’s breasts are older. Tumors are the oldest of all, a finding reported in the journal Genome Biology that might help scientists better understand cancer, explain why breast cancer is so common and help researchers find better ways to prevent it. Less surprising, but intriguing: embryonic stem cells, the body’s master cells, look just like newborns with a biological age of zero. The new measurements might be useful in the search for drugs or other treatments that can turn back the clock on aging tissue and perhaps treating or preventing diseases of aging, such as heart disease and cancer, says Steve Horvath, a professor of genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “The big question is whether the biological clock controls a process that leads to aging,” Horvath said. Horvath looked at a genetic process called methylation. It’s a kind of chemical reaction that turns on or off stretches of DNA. All cells have the entire genetic map inside; methylation helps determine which bits of the map the cells use to perform specific functions.

Keyword: Biological Rhythms
Link ID: 18816 - Posted: 10.21.2013