by Aria Pearson Whence the female orgasm? After 40 years of debate evolutionary biologists are no closer to deciding whether it evolved to give women a reproductive boost, or whether it is simply a by-product of male orgasm evolution. The latest attempt to settle the dispute involves quizzing some 10,000 twins and pairs of siblings on their sexual habits. Some evolutionary biologists reckon the female orgasm is adaptive and possibly influences mate choice, strengthens pair bonds or indirectly helps to suck sperm into the uterus. Others argue that women have orgasms for the same reason that men have nipples – being highly adaptive in one sex, the traits tag along for the ride in the other. Brendan Zietsch at the University of Queensland, Australia, and Pekka Santtila at Abo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, think they can help to settle the question. If female orgasm is a simple by-product of male orgasm, the duo argue, then similar genes would underlie orgasmic function in both men and women. As a consequence, opposite-sex twins and siblings will share more similarities in their susceptibility to orgasm – "orgasmability" as Zietsch calls it – than pairs of unrelated people. To measure this orgasmability, the researchers used survey data from just under 5000 sets of identical and non-identical twins and pairs of regular siblings. The questionnaire asked about the time to orgasm in men and the frequency and ease of orgasm in women. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 15787 - Posted: 09.10.2011

Sandrine Ceurstemont, The spinning 3D shape in this video conceals six different illusions. To see it in 3D, you'll need to cross your eyes until the two images overlap and merge together. (If you're having trouble, try viewing the video in full screen or check out some tips here). The object in the video was created by Rex Young, an enthusiast with an illusions channel on YouTube, based on parts and instructions provided by artist Terry Pope. It was originally conceived to be viewed with a pseudoscope, an optical device that switches what the eyes are seeing using mirrors. But, by filming the structure with a stereoscopic camera and reversing the left and right frames, the same illusion can be seen just by crossing your eyes. So why do we perceive this brain trick? When we view a scene, the image that appears on our retina is two-dimensional, so our visual system uses a variety of cues to add depth. One of these involves comparing the position of images on the left and right retinas to determine distance. Since the images in this video have been flipped, it reverses our distance cues, causing far away points to seem closer than nearer ones and altering our perception in a variety of ways. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Vision
Link ID: 15786 - Posted: 09.10.2011

by Catherine de Lange Fetuses can tell the difference between pain and touch in only the last two weeks before birth, which could help to explain why babies born prematurely often have abnormal pain responses. Lorenzo Fabrizi from University College London and colleagues used EEG, a non-invasive way of measuring brain activity, on 46 newborn babies as they underwent a routine heel lance – a pinprick to the heel for taking a blood sample. They also measured how the babies' brains responded to normal touch – a light tap to the heel. Almost half of the babies were born prematurely – some at just 28 weeks – so the team were able to compare the responses of babies in the final stages of development with those of babies born at full term. Premature babies up to the age of 35 weeks had bursts of activity across the whole brain in response to both pain and touch, but a change happened around 35 weeks. Between 35 to 37 weeks – just before a fetus would normally be born – the brain seemed to become able to tell the two stimuli apart. The responses to both pain and touch now took place in specific areas on the front, back and sides of the brain, but the signal was much stronger for pain. "This is an important stage in the development of the brain," says Fabrizi, when changes occur to allow the brain to process sensory stimulation in a more sophisticated way in preparation for life outside the womb. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15785 - Posted: 09.10.2011

Analysis by Jennifer Viegas Shrimp, most often seen in cocktail glasses with a side of sauce, aren't exactly known for their musical talents. But a study in the journal Aquatic Biology found that, at least for mantis shrimp, each has its own unique voice, with males teaming up in groups of three either to attract females or frighten off enemies. Like rappers, these male shrimp vocal groups produce synchronized rhythmic pieces that grab the attention of others. Marine biologist Erica Staaterman of the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences and colleagues heard the shrimp after collecting data using various instruments. These included hydrophones and an autonomous recording unit placed in the muddy waters off the coast of Catalina Island, California. "Rarely are there studies of benthic acoustics (sounds from the ocean floor)," said Staaterman in a press release. "There has always been suspicion that burrow-dwelling creatures like the mantis shrimp make some sort of noise, and our research is going to help us better understand life and communication on the ocean floor." The study revealed that each mantis shrimp made noise, with individuals all seeming to produce their own characteristic sounds. The males were heard making loud rhythmic "rumbles" with their trios. (You can listen to certain mantis rumbles here.) Each male measures about 8 to 10 inches long, so these are sizeable shrimp that can create quite a din, especially if you imagine numerous trios all rumbling in the same area. © 2011 Discovery Communications, LLC.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Animal Communication
Link ID: 15784 - Posted: 09.10.2011

by Kim Krieger A mathematical model may explain how the nerves in your ear sense harmony, a team of biophysicists reports. The model suggests that pleasant harmonies cause neurons to fire in regular patterns whereas discordant notes stimulate messier neuron activity. Strike the middle C on a piano and hold it. Count two white keys to the right and hit the A. The bright and pleasing sound of a major third fills the air. That unmistakable sensation of musical harmony depends on the frequencies of the sound waves that make the two notes. Consonant chords consist of musical notes whose frequencies form simple ratios such as 2/1 for an octave, 3/2 for a major fifth, or 5/4 for a major third. Dissonant chords have frequency ratios of big numbers such as 16/15 or 45/32. But scientists don’t know precisely how the ear and brain sense this mathematical difference. Now, Bernardo Spagnolo, a biophysicist at the University of Palermo in Italy and collaborators at Lobachevsky State University of Nizhni Novgorod in Russia have come up with a simple neurological model that does the trick. A sound wave sets your eardrum vibrating, which ultimately causes a spiraling membrane within the inner ear called the basilar membrane to vibrate, too. Exactly where along its length the membrane jiggles depends on the frequency of the sound, with higher frequencies causing jiggling farther along the tapering membrane. Those vibrations stimulate neurons that convey the frequency information to the brain. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Hearing
Link ID: 15783 - Posted: 09.10.2011

A gene responsible for chronic pain has been identified, with scientists saying this could lead to drugs for treating long-lasting back pain. Writing in the journal Science, University of Cambridge researchers removed the HCN2 gene from pain-sensitive nerves in mice. Deleting the gene stopped any chronic pain but did not affect acute pain. About one in seven people in the UK suffer from chronic pain, which can also include arthritis and headaches. The researchers say their findings open up the possibility that new drugs could be developed to block the protein produced by the HCN2 gene, which regulates chronic pain. The HCN2 gene, which is expressed in pain-sensitive nerve endings, has been known for several years, but its role in regulating pain was not understood. For the study, the researchers removed the HCN2 gene from pain-sensitive nerves. They then carried out studies using electrical stimuli on these nerves in cell cultures to determine how they were altered by the removal of HCN2. They then studied genetically modified mice in which the HCN2 gene had been deleted. By measuring the speed that the mice withdrew from different types of painful stimuli, the scientists were able to conclude that deleting the HCN2 gene abolished neuropathic pain. BBC © 2011

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15782 - Posted: 09.10.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey A fish that swims in limestone caverns under the Somalian desert has something to tell scientists about keeping time. Despite living in permanent darkness, with no difference between day and night, this blind cave-dweller still has its own quirky sense of rhythm. The Somalian cave fish, Phreatichthys andruzzii, has an inner timekeeper that ticks out a roughly 47-hour cycle set by food rather than sunlight, scientists from Italy, Germany and Spain report online September 6 in PLoS Biology. This odd biological clock may teach scientists more about the molecular pathways that govern such clocks, why clocks are important to organisms and how living things adapt when their clocks are no longer tied to cycles set by the rising and setting of the sun. Most animals, plants and some kinds of bacteria follow the sun’s cue in setting their own daily clocks. These biological, or circadian, clocks help govern sleeping, waking and feeding times, the rise and fall of blood pressure and other daily rhythms. Generally, circadian clocks follow an approximately 24-hour cycle and are reset largely by sunlight. When people’s circadian clocks aren’t set correctly, jet lag and even long-term health problems can result. Researchers study fish and other organisms to learn how circadian clocks’ gears mesh. Somalian cave fish have been cut off from the sun for up to 2.6 million years. Adapting to life in the dark has not only caused the fish’s eyes (as well as its scales and skin coloring) to disappear, but also altered its clock, say study authors Nicholas S. Foulkes of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, Cristiano Bertolucci of the University of Ferrara in Italy and their colleagues. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Biological Rhythms; Evolution
Link ID: 15781 - Posted: 09.08.2011

By Nathan Seppa Threading a catheter up into the brain and inserting a device that widens a dangerously narrowed artery might do more harm than good in some patients at risk of stroke. An aggressive course of medications alone appears to be safer, researchers report online September 7 in the New England Journal of Medicine. Mesh cylinders called stents have offered cardiologists an inside-out approach to opening clogged coronary arteries that is less invasive than surgery. Now researchers are using a new generation of tiny stents to tackle similarly narrowed vessels in the brain. Federal regulators approved a brain stent in 2005, and past studies have supported stents’ effectiveness against stroke (SN: 2/17/2007, p. 99). Researchers used the approved stent in the new trial. They enrolled hundreds of patients at 50 hospitals who had just survived a stroke or had a transient ischemic attack, a kind of stroke that clears up within a day, says study coauthor Marc Chimowitz, a neurologist at the Medical University of South Carolina. The average age of the patients was about 60. Brain scans of these patients pinpointed an artery with buildup that obstructed at least 70 percent of blood flow. People with such bottlenecks are at high risk of having a stroke, because a blood clot may form at the narrowed spot and block blood flow, or a loose clot might get lodged at the pinch point. All patients received clot-busting medicines — aspirin and clopidogrel (Plavix) — and were given drugs to lower cholesterol and control blood pressure. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 15780 - Posted: 09.08.2011

By Laura Sanders To one part of the brain, a bathroom equals toilet plus tub. In mental terms, certain scenes are sums of their objects, researchers report online September 4 in Nature Neuroscience. The results help explain how people quickly and accurately recognize complicated scenes such as playgrounds, kitchens and traffic intersections. Much of what scientists know about vision comes from studies of how people see simple objects in isolation, such as a line floating on a white screen, says cognitive neuroscientist Dirk Bernhardt-Walther of Ohio State University. The new work, in contrast, deals with messy, real-world scenes. “It’s an awesome study,” he says. A number of different brain areas are involved in telling us where we are, each relying on different types of information. In cases where the general outlines of a place offer little information, it appears, the brain homes in on specific objects within that space. “A bathroom and a kitchen may have similar three-dimensional shapes of the interior, but the objects will tell you a big difference,” says study coauthor Sean MacEvoy of Boston College. MacEvoy and Russell Epstein of the University of Pennsylvania measured the brain activity of 28 people viewing one of four scenes: a bathroom, kitchen, street intersection or playground. Participants then saw isolated objects associated with each scene, allowing the researchers to record the neural signature of each object. MacEvoy and Epstein focused on a particular part of the brain called the lateral occipital cortex, or LOC, which had responded to objects in previous studies. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15779 - Posted: 09.08.2011

by Sara Reardon They're not quite psychic yet, but machines are getting better at reading your mind. Researchers have invented a new, noninvasive method for recording patterns of brain activity and using them to steer a robot. Scientists hope the technology will give "locked in" patients—those too disabled to communicate with the outside world—the ability to interact with others and even give the illusion of being physically present, or "telepresent," with friends and family. Previous brain-machine interface systems have made it possible for people to control robots, cursors, or prosthetics with conscious thought, but they often take a lot of effort and concentration, says José del R. Millán, a biomedical engineer at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, who develops brain-machine interface systems that don't need to be implanted into the brain. Millán's goal is to make control as easy as driving a car on a highway. A partially autonomous robot would allow a user to stop concentrating on tasks that he or she would normally do subconsciously, such as following a person or avoiding running into walls. But if the robot encounters an unexpected event and needs to make a split-second decision, the user's thoughts can override the robot's artificial intelligence. To test their technology, Millán and colleagues created a telepresent robot by modifying a commercially available bot called Robotino. The robot looks a bit like a platform on three wheels, and it can avoid obstacles on its own using infrared sensors. On top of the robot, the researchers placed a laptop running Skype, a voice and video Internet chat system, over a wireless Internet connection. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 15778 - Posted: 09.08.2011

by Jennifer Couzin-Frankel Many babies born prematurely suffer from bleeding in their still-developing brains. Even when the bleeding stops, another life-threatening condition can strike: hydrocephalus, which occurs when fluid produced to keep the brain healthy builds up because it can't properly drain. For decades, doctors have known that the bleeding and hydrocephalus, also called "water on the brain," were linked, but they weren't sure why. A new study suggests the answer lies in a lipid that's common in blood but that can also profoundly disrupt brain structure and function when it's present in large quantities. Hydrocephalus strikes about one in 1500 babies, and treatment is imperfect. Doctors usually implant a shunt to drain cerebrospinal fluid out of the brain and into the spinal cord. Shunts fail over time, however, and follow-up surgeries are sometimes needed. The condition itself can also cause lifelong neurological problems. The roots of hydrocephalus remain murky, but for those linked to brain bleeds, the hypothesis was that blood clots—necessary to stop the bleeding—blocked the razor-thin pathways through which cerebrospinal fluid must travel to exit the brain. "We assumed for 100 years that it was just a mechanical block," says James McAllister II, a neuroembryologist at the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, who wasn't involved in the recent work. "Everybody thought that you dammed up the narrow channels." A group based at The Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, recently began to suspect that something else was at work. For years, Scripps neuroscientist Jerold Chun had been studying the embryonic brain and how certain lipids in the blood of both the mother and the embryo affect its development. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15777 - Posted: 09.08.2011

By Christopher Eppig Being smart is the most expensive thing we do. Not in terms of money, but in a currency that is vital to all living things: energy. One study found that newborn humans spend close to 90 percent of their calories on building and running their brains. (Even as adults, our brains consume as much as a quarter of our energy.) If, during childhood, when the brain is being built, some unexpected energy cost comes along, the brain will suffer. Infectious disease is a factor that may rob large amounts of energy away from a developing brain. This was our hypothesis, anyway, when my colleagues, Corey Fincher and Randy Thornhill, and I published a paper on the global diversity of human intelligence. A great deal of research has shown that average IQ varies around the world, both across nations and within them. The cause of this variation has been of great interest to scientists for many years. At the heart of this debate is whether these differences are due to genetics, environment or both. Higher IQ predicts a wide range of important factors, including better grades in school, a higher level of education, better health, better job performance, higher wages, and reduced risk of obesity. So having a better understanding of variations in intelligence might yield a greater understanding of these other issues as well. Before our work, several scientists had offered explanations for the global pattern of IQ. Nigel Barber argued that variation in IQ is due primarily to differences in education. Donald Templer and Hiroko Arikawa argued that colder climates are difficult to live in, such that evolution favors higher IQ in those areas. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Intelligence; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15776 - Posted: 09.08.2011

Brian Handwerk A new chemical may soon allow scientists to see exactly what's on your mind—because the substance turns brain tissue totally transparent. Known as Scale, the new chemical makes body tissue so crystal clear that light can penetrate deeply enough for researchers to directly see fluorescent markers embedded in cells and other structures. This advance could unveil new frontiers in medical imaging, according to its creators. "Our current experiments are focused on the mouse brain, but applications are neither limited to mice nor to the brain," Atsushi Miyawaki, of Japan's RIKEN Brain Science Institute, said in a press statement. We envision using Scale on other organs such as the heart, muscles, and kidneys and on tissues from primate and human biopsy samples." Paul Thompson, a neurologist at the UCLA School of Medicine who's unaffiliated with the research, said pictures of transparent organs and embryonic mice treated with Scale are incredible. "I've worked in brain imaging for 20 years, and seeing something like this really had a wow factor," he said. © 1996-2011 National Geographic Society.

Keyword: Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15775 - Posted: 09.08.2011

by Michael Marshall Dave the dolphin whistles, and his friend Alan whistles back. We can't yet decipher their calls, but some of the time Dave may be calling: "Alan! Alan! Alan! Alan!" Stephanie King of the University of St Andrews, UK, and colleagues monitored 179 pairs of wild bottlenose dolphins off the Florida coast between 1988 and 2004. Of these, 10 were seen copying each other's signature whistles, which the dolphins make to identify themselves to each other. The behaviour has never been documented before, and was only seen in pairs composed of a mother and her calf or adults who would normally move around and hunt together. The copied whistles changed frequency in the same way as real signature whistles, but either started from a higher frequency or didn't last as long, suggesting Dave was not merely imitating Alan. Copying only happened when a pair had become separated, which leads King to speculate that they were trying to get back together. She believes the dolphins were mimicking another animal's whistle as a way of calling them by name. King presented her research last week at the summer conference of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour in St Andrews. Justin Gregg of the Dolphin Communication Project in Old Mystic, Connecticut, remains cautious, and points out that the dolphins may copy the signature whistles simply because they hear them a lot. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Animal Communication; Language
Link ID: 15774 - Posted: 09.08.2011

by Michael Marshall If there's one word that sums up a newborn human baby, it's "helpless". Newly hatched greater honeyguide chicks are far more capable: chillingly so. They emerge into pitch darkness, inside a tunnel dug by another bird where their mother has left them. They will soon be joined by the host bird's own chicks when they hatch. If this was a slasher movie, now would be the time to cover your eyes. The young honeyguide kills the other chicks within an hour. All this from a bird that as an adult helpfully guides humans to bees' nests, which the humans then raid for honey. Honeyguides lay their eggs in other birds' nests, just like cuckoos. Claire Spottiswoode of the University of Cambridge studies them in southern Zambia, where they tend to parasitise little bee-eaters. These birds dig tunnels in the sandy ground, often in the roofs of aardvark holes, where they lay their eggs. Spottiswoode was able to insert video cameras into these nests. Female honeyguides slip into the tunnels and lay their own eggs there. If there are any little bee-eater eggs in place, the honeyguide mother punctures them with her beak. That's not always enough, however, because eggs sometimes survive and the little bee-eater may lay more. Spottiswoode found that only 67 per cent of host eggs were punctured in parasitised nests. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Aggression; Evolution
Link ID: 15773 - Posted: 09.08.2011

By THERESA BROWN, R.N. During nursing school, I remember my first clinical instructor initiating us into one of the paradoxical truths of health care: “You don’t come to the hospital to sleep.” Recently, a patient was set to be discharged the next day. But he needed a transfusion of platelets before we could remove the intravenous line that had been used to deliver chemotherapy. Thinking through the timing, the physician assistant realized that to get everything done, and to get the patient discharged on time, his treatment would have to start early in the morning. She scheduled the transfusion for 4 a.m, which meant the patient had to be woken at 3:30 a.m. to take the medications required before a transfusion. For practical reasons, it made sense. But the patient didn’t see it that way. “Can’t it be later so that I can sleep?” he asked. I started explaining why the transfusion had to be at 4 in the morning, but the patient wasn’t buying it. A kind and gentle man, he had had enough of being woken in the middle of the night. After several weeks in the hospital, he was tired. He wanted to sleep. And there was no way for him to doze through this particular procedure. For starters, we would turn on the lights in his darkened room, and two nurses would begin reading the medical record number on his wristband. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 15772 - Posted: 09.08.2011

By Ivan Amato, The next time you experience a horseradish rush — you know, those tear-jerking omigod seconds when your entire head is tsunamied by pungency from the too-big dollop of herb you just wolfed down — consider that some biologists describe your moments of agony as nothing less than a brief exposure to a natural form of tear gas. The horseradish’s primary chemical irritant, allyl isothiocyanate, stimulates the same class of chemical receptors on the same sensory cells in your mouth, throat, nose, sinuses, face and eyes as do tear gas agents and pepper spray’s capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers that lights your mouth on fire. In recent years, scientists have been uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying these sensations. They say their discoveries could lead to new pain-managing medicines and provide insights into whether adding menthol to cigarettes makes it easier to get hooked on on them. But before we go there, it is worth looking at how and why we take notice of such chemicals at all. It comes down to this: Evolution has given animals, including us humans, some serious protective measures against harmful chemicals in the environment. Meanwhile, plants, which have been forced to be sneaky because of their inability to run away, have developed chemical defenses to prevent them from being eaten, at least by animals that don’t help spread the plants’ seeds. © 1996-2011 The Washington Post

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Evolution
Link ID: 15771 - Posted: 09.08.2011

by Alison George He has already revealed that early humans interbred with Neanderthals and discovered a whole new type of hominin from its DNA alone. Now Svante Pääbo is setting his sights on even more exotic discoveries. He tells Alison George why he thinks the bombshells will keep coming Last year you revealed a previously unknown type of hominin, called the Denisovans, from DNA in a pinkie bone found in a cave in Denisova, Siberia. Tell me about this. We knew people had lived in this cave, but thought they were either Neanderthals or modern humans. When we sequenced the DNA, I was in the US so a postdoc called me to tell me the results. He said: "Are you sitting down?" because it was immediately clear this was some other form of human; not a Neanderthal, not a modern human. We were totally shocked. This is the first time that a new form of human has been defined totally from molecular data, not from the morphology of fossils. I think this will happen much more in the future - that just from a tiny speck of bone we can determine the whole genome and reconstruct much of the history. You recently visited this cave. What was it like? The cave is in the Altai mountains in central Asia and it was the first time I had seen it. It is really beautiful. It's big, almost cathedral-like with light coming in through a natural chimney. And you know that in this cave there have been both the Denisovans and modern humans and perhaps Neanderthals too. I went there for a meeting where anatomists, palaeontologists and archaeologists came together for the first time to try to sort out what we can say about this group of humans. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15770 - Posted: 09.06.2011

by Mark Buchanan The fuzziness and weird logic of the way particles behave applies surprisingly well to how humans think THE quantum world defies the rules of ordinary logic. Particles routinely occupy two or more places at the same time and don't even have well-defined properties until they are measured. It's all strange, yet true - quantum theory is the most accurate scientific theory ever tested and its mathematics is perfectly suited to the weirdness of the atomic world. Yet that mathematics actually stands on its own, quite independent of the theory. Indeed, much of it was invented well before quantum theory even existed, notably by German mathematician David Hilbert. Now, it's beginning to look as if it might apply to a lot more than just quantum physics, and quite possibly even to the way people think. Human thinking, as many of us know, often fails to respect the principles of classical logic. We make systematic errors when reasoning with probabilities, for example. Physicist Diederik Aerts of the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, has shown that these errors actually make sense within a wider logic based on quantum mathematics. The same logic also seems to fit naturally with how people link concepts together, often on the basis of loose associations and blurred boundaries. That means search algorithms based on quantum logic could uncover meanings in masses of text more efficiently than classical algorithms. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Attention; Emotions
Link ID: 15769 - Posted: 09.06.2011

McMaster University researchers have discovered that a key gene may explain why some people are energetic and others find it hard to get moving. The team was working with mice, some of which had two genes removed. The genes control the AMP-activated protein kinase (or AMPK), an enzyme that is released during exercise. While mice like to run, the mice without the genes were not as active as mice with the genes. "While the normal mice could run for miles, those without the genes in their muscle could only run the same distance as down the hall and back," Gregory Steinberg, associate professor of medicine in the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine and Canada Research Chair in Metabolism and Obesity, said in a release Monday. "The mice looked identical to their brothers or sisters, but within seconds we knew which ones had the genes and which one didn't." The researchers found the mice without the AMPK genes had lower levels of mitochondria — sometimes described as cellular power plants — and their muscles were less able to take up glucose while they exercised. By removing the genes, the researchers found that AMPK is the key regulator of the mitochondria, said Steinberg. The research is in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © CBC 2011

Keyword: Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15768 - Posted: 09.06.2011