By Nathan Seppa Using brain surgery to insert replacement genes, doctors can alleviate some movement problems in people with Parkinson’s disease. While not all of the gene therapy recipients in a new study improved, the group on average registered tangible gains after getting a gene that revs up production of a much-needed neurotransmitter, researchers report in an upcoming issue of Lancet Neurology. Notably, none of the patients had significant side effects attributable to the therapy. “The pendulum on gene therapy has really swung back and forth,” says study coauthor Matthew During, a physician and neuroscientist at Ohio State University in Columbus. “It was enormously hyped at first.” But the death of a patient in Philadelphia in 1999 and the appearance of leukemia in children in France getting gene therapy for an immune disorder — leading to a temporary suspension of trials in 2003 — stalled the research. “The field languished for a while,” During says. But he and his colleagues have continued to pursue the technology, using a disabled, nonpathogenic virus as the delivery vehicle for potentially useful genes. To treat Parkinson’s disease, the team has targeted a troublesome part of the brain where signaling gets obstructed in patients with the neurological disorder. In the new study, the researchers randomly assigned 16 patients with advanced Parkinson’s to undergo an operation to install gene replacements; 21 similar patients got sham surgery and received no genes. Neither group was told which operation they were getting. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15129 - Posted: 03.24.2011

by Ferris Jabr A handful of people around the world have never known the meaning of physical pain – not because they live incredibly sheltered lives, but because their nerves lack a crucial ion channel that helps transmit signals between adjacent nerve cells. A new study reveals that our sense of smell depends on this same protein gate, establishing a previously unrecognised link between the perception of pain and scent. Jan Weiss of the University of Saarland School of Medicine in Homburg, Germany, and his colleagues recruited three people who cannot feel pain because they have a rare condition known as congenital analgesia. Weiss wanted to know whether people with this disorder have difficulty with other senses. The trio of participants – two of whom were siblings – could see and hear well and had never complained about a lousy sense of smell, but the researchers decided to put their noses to the test anyway. When the participants sniffed cotton wool pads soaked in balsamic vinegar, orange, mint, perfume and coffee, they failed to identify any of the odours. In contrast, nine healthy volunteers and the siblings' parents performed just fine, breathing deeply from the pleasant orange and mint scents and turning sharply away from the vinegar. Weiss and his team already knew that people who cannot experience physical pain usually lack a sodium ion channel called Nav1.7 in the membranes of nerve cells in the dorsal root ganglion and in the ganglia that are part of the autonomic nervous system, and wondered whether this loss could also explain the smelling problems. To find out, they examined tissue samples taken from the nose and olfactory system of normal people during surgery. The examinations revealed Nav1.7 channels in the cell membranes of the neurons that stipple these tissues. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Pain & Touch; Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 15128 - Posted: 03.24.2011

By Daniela Schiller and David Carmel Think about the last time you got bored with the TV channel you were watching and decided to change it with the remote control. Or a time you grabbed a magazine off a newsstand, or raised a hand to hail a taxi. As we go about our daily lives, we constantly make choices to act in certain ways. We all believe we exercise free will in such actions – we decide what to do and when to do it. Free will, however, becomes more complicated when you try to think how it can arise from brain activity. Do we control our neurons or do they control us? If everything we do starts in the brain, what kind of neural activity would reflect free choice? And how would you feel about your free will if we were to tell you that neuroscientists can look at your brain activity, and tell that you are about to make a decision to move – and that they could do this a whole second and a half before you yourself became aware of your own choice? Scientists from UCLA and Harvard -- Itzhak Fried, Roy Mukamel and Gabriel Kreiman -- have taken an audacious step in the search for free will, reported in a new article in the journal Neuron. They used a powerful tool – intracranial recording – to find neurons in the human brain whose activity predicts decisions to make a movement, challenging conventional notions of free will. Fried is one of a handful of neurosurgeons in the world who perform the delicate procedure of inserting electrodes into a living human brain, and using them to record activity from individual neurons. He does this to pin down the source of debilitating seizures in the brains of epileptic patients. Once he locates the part of the patients’ brains that sparks off the seizures, he can remove it, pulling the plug on their neuronal electrical storms. © 2011 Scientific American,

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15127 - Posted: 03.24.2011

By Carolyn Y. Johnson Amir Lahav peered into the incubators where his premature twins slept, their frighteningly tiny bodies entwined with tubes and wires. This was a world very different from the womb, he thought. It wasn’t just the ventilators and the IV lines that made him anxious for Mia and Agami, born 3 1/2 months too soon. A musician and a neurology researcher, Lahav also worried about the din of the neonatal intensive care unit. The soundscape of the womb had been replaced by beeping alarms, pagers, ventilators, and talking. “Every time the door was open, there was so much noise coming in from the room,’’ Lahav said. He persuaded Dr. Steven Ringer, chief of newborn medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, to allow him to play a recording of his wife, Galit, speaking to the infants. When the parents could not be there to snuggle the babies directly on their skin, the recording could be played on a small speaker in their incubators. He hoped it would make the hospital sound more like the womb, in which babies can hear their mother’s muffled voice and heartbeat. At the time, in 2007, Lahav was thinking with his gut, not his head. But he began to realize this was a critical period — a time when the twins’ developing brains were especially malleable, with neurological connections being formed and molded as easily as Play-Doh. He wondered whether the abrupt change in the acoustic environment could be one reason that premature babies are more likely to have developmental problems later, including learning disabilities, cognitive or language deficits, or attention problems. © 2011 NY Times Co.

Keyword: Development of the Brain; Language
Link ID: 15126 - Posted: 03.22.2011

By SINDYA N. BHANOO It is always a challenge to remember a new computer password after an old one has expired, or to memorize a new phone number. That is because the brain is competing to recall old memories and new ones that are associated with the same thing, researchers from Yale and Stanford report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Brice Kuhl, a psychologist at Yale, and his colleagues found that when the brain is cluttered with similar events, the difficulty in recalling just one of them is visible through the brain-scanning technology known as functional magnetic resonance imaging. The researchers provided subjects with words that had both face associations and scene associations. When they ran a scan and asked the subjects to recall the association they had most recently seen, blood flowed in parts of the brain that are used to recall faces and scenes. Most people regularly encounter this competition. “I park in a garage every day at work, and I park in a different space every day, depending on availability,” Dr. Kuhl said. “And I very often walk to where I parked the day before. It’s not that I totally forgot where I parked, it’s just that I still remember yesterday’s spot.” © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Learning & Memory
Link ID: 15125 - Posted: 03.22.2011

By JOHN TIERNEY Suppose that Mark and Bill live in a deterministic universe. Everything that happens this morning — like Mark’s decision to wear a blue shirt, or Bill’s latest attempt to comb over his bald spot — is completely caused by whatever happened before it. If you recreated this universe starting with the Big Bang and let all events proceed exactly the same way until this same morning, then the blue shirt is as inevitable as the comb-over. Now for questions from experimental philosophers: 1) In this deterministic universe, is it possible for a person to be fully morally responsible for his actions? 2) This year, as he has often done in the past, Mark arranges to cheat on his taxes. Is he is fully morally responsible for his actions? 3) Bill falls in love with his secretary, and he decides that the only way to be with her is to murder his wife and three children. Before leaving on a trip, he arranges for them to be killed while he is away. Is Bill fully morally responsible for his actions? To a classic philosopher, these are just three versions of the same question about free will. But to the new breed of philosophers who test people’s responses to concepts like determinism, there are crucial differences, as Shaun Nichols explains in the current issue of Science. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Attention
Link ID: 15124 - Posted: 03.22.2011

By RONI CARYN RABIN Women who take codeine, oxycodone and other opioid pain drugs early in pregnancy may be exposing their babies to a higher risk of birth defects, a new study suggests. Though the overall numbers were small, babies whose mothers took opioids were considerably more likely than others to have congenital problems, including a potentially fatal syndrome in which the left part of the heart does not develop completely; spina bifida; and gastroschisis, in which the intestines stick out of the body. The study, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was one of the largest to examine the effects of opioid use during pregnancy. It appeared last month in The American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. It used data from the National Birth Defects Prevention Study about mothers in 10 states who gave birth from 1997 to 2005. Of 17,449 mothers whose babies had a birth defect, 454, or 2.6 percent, reported treatment with opioid analgesics a month before pregnancy or during the three months after conception. In the comparison group of 6,701 women, the rate of opioid treatment was 2.0 percent. “Opioids and their receptors act as growth regulators during embryologic development, which may explain our findings,” said Cheryl S. Broussard, the paper’s lead author. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 15123 - Posted: 03.22.2011

by Sheril Kirshenbaum; Ill 1 Only you: Human lips are different from those of all other animals because they are everted, meaning that they purse outward. 2 But we are not the only species to engage in kissing-like behaviors. Great apes press their lips together to express excitement, affection, or reconciliation. 3 Scientists are not sure why humans kiss, but some think the answer lies in early feeding experiences. Through nursing and (in some cultures) receiving pre-chewed food from a parent's mouth, infants may learn to associate lip pressure with a loving act. 4 Another possibility: Smelling a loved one's cheek has long served as a means of recognition in cultures around the world, from New Zealand to Alaska. Over time, a brush of the lips may have become a traditional accompaniment. 5 And yet kissing is not universal, leading some experts, like anthropologist Vaughn Bryant of Texas A&M, to think it might actually be a learned behavior. 6 The Roman military introduced kissing to many non-kissing cultures (after its conquests were over, presumably); later it was European explorers who carried the torch. © 2011, Kalmbach Publishing Co.

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 15122 - Posted: 03.22.2011

By BRYSON VOIRIN I love to sleep. That feeling when you wake up fully rested, crisp and fresh, is nirvana. Sleep is essential part of our daily lives. Stop sleeping and your body starts losing function, mental clarity evaporates, and you eventually die. Sleep seems to be essential for all animals, given that every animal studied has been found to sleep. Insects, fish, birds, and I all participate in this daily phenomenon. But why do we sleep? What purpose does it serve? The truth is, we don’t really know. We know loads about the neuronal pathways that define the various stages of sleep. We also know what happens when we are sleep-deprived (think of staying up all night for a final exam). But the true purpose of this curious state that we enter nightly remains mysterious. Many researchers are working on solving this enigma through various clinical, experimental and observational studies on humans and animals. For years, researchers have recorded sleep in animals ranging from mice to elephants. But these animals have always been captive, caged or otherwise restrained. Our lab at the Max Planck Institute is the only group studying sleep in wild, unrestrained animals. There is enormous variation in the natural world, with some animals sleeping only two hours a day, while others require 20 hours. To properly understand this variation we have to study them in their natural habitat. It’s not that surprising that the behavior of captive animals is significantly different from that of their wild counterparts. Imagine if I studied sleep only in people on airplanes, and used that to infer that this is their “normal” sleeping pattern. We are hardly the first people to suspect there are differences in the sleep patterns of wild and captive animals. We are just the first to have the technology to effectively study it in the wild. © 2011 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 15121 - Posted: 03.21.2011

Scientists have shown how a single protein may trigger autistic spectrum disorders by stopping effective communication between brain cells. The team from Duke University in North Carolina created autistic mice by mutating the gene which controls production of the protein, Shank3. The animals exhibited social problems, and repetitive behaviour - both classic signs of autism and related conditions. The Nature study raises hopes of the first effective drug treatments. Autism is a disorder which, to varying degrees, affects the ability of children and adults to communicate and interact socially. While hundreds of genes linked to the condition have been found, the precise combination of genetics, biochemistry and other environmental factors which produce autism is still unclear. Each patient has only one or a handful of those mutations, making it difficult to develop drugs to treat the disorder. Shank3 is found in the synapses - the junctions between brain cells (neurons) that allow them to communicate with each other. The researchers created mice which had a mutated form of Shank3, and found that these animals avoided social interactions with other mice. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Autism
Link ID: 15120 - Posted: 03.21.2011

By James Gallagher Health reporter, BBC News A new way of delivering drugs to the brain has been developed by scientists at the University of Oxford. They used the body's own transporters - exosomes - to deliver drugs in an experiment on mice. The authors say the study, in Nature Biotechnology, could be vital for treating diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Muscular Dystrophy. The Alzheimer's Society said the study was "exciting" and could lead to more effective treatments. Research barrier One of the medical challenges with diseases of the brain is getting any treatment to cross the blood-brain barrier. The barrier exists to protect the brain, preventing bacteria from crossing over from the blood, while letting oxygen through. However, this has also produced problems for medicine, as drugs can also be blocked. In this study the researchers used exosomes to cross that barrier. Exosomes are like the body's own fleet of incredibly small vans, transporting materials between cells. BBC © MMXI

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 15119 - Posted: 03.21.2011

CONJURE up an image of a financial risk-taker, and you'll probably picture an aggressive Wall Street trader, testosterone surging as he closes the deal. But new research suggests that people with low levels of the male sex hormone are also likely to take financial risks. Previous studies have linked high levels of testosterone to certain risk-seeking behaviours. To investigate whether financial risk-taking follows a similar pattern, Scott Huettel at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, measured the testosterone levels of 298 people, who then took part in trials in which they chose between a fixed known reward or a gamble between getting a payout - mostly larger than the fixed reward - or nothing. Overall, the volunteers generally preferred the known return than the gamble, even if they would have been better off, on average, by taking a chance. Surprisingly, the biggest risks were taken by people with very high or very low testosterone, compared with the average levels for their gender (Psychological Science, DOI: 10.1177/0956797611401752). Economists want to predict who is likely to be successful at playing financial markets, says Dario Mastripieri at the University of Chicago. "It's legitimate to ask if biology is going to have an effect." © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Hormones & Behavior; Emotions
Link ID: 15118 - Posted: 03.21.2011

By Steve Connor, Science Editor They range in size from the tiny Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, weighing little more than an ounce, to the 440lb mountain gorilla. And the primate species, of course, incorporates humans, once famously described as the "third chimpanzee" because of the close genetic similarity with the two living species of chimp, the common chimp and the bonobo. Even without the human component, the primates would include some of the most intelligent life forms on the planet and their extraordinary success is largely down to their relatively large brains, binocular vision and ability to grasp and manipulate objects between their four digits and opposable thumb. Now for the first time scientists have drawn a comprehensive family tree of all living species of primates based on a systematic analysis of scores of key genes embedded within their DNA. It shows that Homo sapiens is just one of dozens of primate species that share a common ancestor, probably a small, shrew-like creature that lived during the age of the dinosaurs some 85 million years ago. The complete phylogenetic tree of primates, published in the online journal PLoS Genetics, is based on a comparative analysis of some 54 separate gene regions within the genomes of 186 species of living primates covering the entire family tree, from the smallest lemur to the largest great ape. Scientists believe the study can, for the first time, accurately place Man within the much bigger and more complex tree of relationships that define primates. It should, they insist, provide invaluable insights into early human origins, as well as the diseases we share with our closest relatives. ©independent.co.uk

Keyword: Evolution
Link ID: 15117 - Posted: 03.19.2011

Philip Ball A pianist plays a series of notes, and the woman echoes them on a computerized music system. The woman then goes on to play a simple improvised melody over a looped backing track. It doesn't sound like much of a musical challenge — except that the woman is paralysed after a stroke, and can make only eye, facial and slight head movements. She is making the music purely by thinking. This is a trial of a computer-music system that interacts directly with the user's brain, by picking up the tiny electrical impulses of neurons. The device, developed by composer and computer-music specialist Eduardo Miranda of the University of Plymouth, UK, working with computer scientists at the University of Essex, should eventually help people with severe physical disabilities, caused by brain or spinal-cord injuries, for example, to make music for recreational or therapeutic purposes. The findings are published online in the journal Music and Medicine1. "This is an interesting avenue, and might be very useful for patients," says Rainer Goebel, a neuroscientist at Maastricht University in the Netherlands who works on brain-computer interfacing. Evidence suggests that musical participation can be beneficial for people with neurodegenerative diseases such as dementia and Parkinson's disease. But people who have almost no muscle movement have generally been excluded from such benefits, and can enjoy music only through passive listening. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Hearing; Robotics
Link ID: 15116 - Posted: 03.19.2011

By Rachel Ehrenberg Nerve cell tendrils readily thread their way through tiny semiconductor tubes, researchers find, forming a crisscrossed network like vines twining towards the sun. The discovery that offshoots from nascent mouse nerve cells explore the specially designed tubes could lead to tricks for studying nervous system diseases or testing the effects of potential drugs. Such a system may even bring researchers closer to brain-computer interfaces that seamlessly integrate artificial limbs or other prosthetic devices. “This is quite innovative and interesting,” says nanomaterials expert Nicholas Kotov of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. “There is a great need for interfaces between electronic and neuronal tissues.” To lay the groundwork for a nerve-electronic hybrid, graduate student Minrui Yu of the University of Wisconsin–Madison and his colleagues created tubes of layered silicon and germanium, materials that could insulate electric signals sent by a nerve cell. The tubes were various sizes and shapes and big enough for a nerve cell’s extensions to crawl through but too small for the cell’s main body to get inside. When the team seeded areas outside the tubes with mouse nerve cells the cells went exploring, sending their threadlike projections into the tubes and even following the curves of helical tunnels, the researchers report in an upcoming ACS Nano. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Robotics
Link ID: 15115 - Posted: 03.19.2011

by John C. Cannon Sonar drives beaked whales long distances from their favorite deep-water habitats, according to the first study conducted during actual U.S. Navy exercises. The finding could explain why these whales sometimes end up in dangerously shallow water where they could strand. It also suggests that the level of sonar that the Navy considers safe may be too high. Blainville's beaked whales belong to a mysterious family of long-snouted whales that prowl kilometer-deep ocean canyons, often far from land. And yet, beaked whales often turn up stranded shortly after the intense sonar exercises the Navy uses to train sailors to detect silent enemy submarines. During one such event in 2000, six beaked whales died on beaches in the Bahamas following Navy testing. Some researchers have hypothesized that sonar noise scares whales into dangerous dive patterns, causing disorienting bends-like symptoms that could throw them off course and into unfamiliar shallow water. But solid evidence for sonar's effects on whale behavior has remained elusive, in part because these whales spend so little time at the surface that charting their behavior is difficult. Previous studies have also played back sonar recordings rather than tracking the effects of actual Navy exercises. So in the new study, animal behaviorist Peter Tyack of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts and colleagues enlisted the Navy's help. The researchers set up at the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center in the Bahamas, where the Navy trains sailors in sonar use. With a set of underwater microphones, they listened for the "click trains" of Blainville's beaked whales—signature sets of clicks that the animals use to home in on squid and other favorite prey in the murky depths of the sea. © 2010 American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Keyword: Hearing; Animal Migration
Link ID: 15114 - Posted: 03.19.2011

By Linda Carroll and JoNel Aleccia A wave of nausea washed over Marcie Iseli shortly after her CT scan finished. Then her head started to feel strange, as if heat was emanating from somewhere deep inside. Her face started to feel uncomfortably warm, like she’d been sunburned. She’d gone in for the brain scan because of headaches and nerve pain on one side of her face, but now doctors had no idea what was wrong with her — especially since the scan showed no abnormalities. Two weeks later, clumps of her hair started falling out, followed by debilitating fatigue and problems with balance and memory. “I lost a 4-inch wide strip of hair that went from one side of my head to the other, recalls the 36-year-old mother of two from Kenova, W.Va. “I went to my family physician and then to a dermatologist who said he’d never seen anything like it.” It was two months before Iseli learned the cause of her mysterious symptoms: She’d gotten an overdose of radiation during the scan of her head, a blast almost eight times the expected amount. Within minutes, Iseli became a victim of radiation poisoning, with some of the same symptoms and possible long-term effects that may face workers now exposed to high levels of radiation at Japan’s ailing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. While Iseli’s targeted medical overdose is not the same as the full-body blast of a nuclear accident, it does offer some insight into the experience of radiation exposure, doctors say. © 2011 msnbc.com

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 15113 - Posted: 03.17.2011

by Ferris Jabr Gene therapy for Parkinson's disease has moved a step closer to acceptance in the wake of its first successful double-blind clinical trial. In 2007, Andrew Feigin of the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research in Manhasset, New York, and colleagues conducted an open-label trial – one in which both patients and researchers know which trial members are receiving the treatment and which are given a placebo – to assess a new gene therapy for Parkinson's, which is a neurodegenerative disorder. They demonstrated that a gene that codes for glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD) can improve the condition of people with the disease when injected into their brains. GAD is an enzyme that catalyses production of an inhibitory neurotransmitter called gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). Typically, people with Parkinson's produce too little GABA, and consequently have overstimulation in an area of the brain called the subthalamic nucleus. This overactivity in turn puts strain on neurons that produce another neurotransmitter – dopamine – which is vital for movement control. This helps explain some of the symptoms of Parkinson's, which include tremors, sluggish movements, rigid muscles and impaired posture and balance. Now the team have put their therapy to the ultimate test: a double-blind clinical trial in which neither the patient nor the clinical staff – other than the surgeons performing the procedures – knew who was receiving the therapy and who was given a placebo. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Parkinsons; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 15112 - Posted: 03.17.2011

Ewen Callaway A sperm's path to an egg is more a deadly obstacle course than a track sprint. The one ejaculated sperm cell in a million that is lucky enough to reach the fallopian tubes, where eggs await fertilization, must conquer thick, gelatinous layers of mucus and cells surrounding the egg to reach its prize. Fortunately for the sperm, there is help. Two studies published today in Nature1,2 show how sperm sense progesterone, a female sex hormone, that has been released by cells surrounding the egg. The hormone may guide the sperm towards the egg as well as giving it a final push to get there, the research suggests. The findings could be used to design a new class of contraceptive drug. "It really is a significant step forward in terms of how we understand what regulates sperm," says Steven Publicover, a reproductive biologist at the University of Birmingham, UK, who was not involved in either study. In some previous experiments, ejaculated human sperm have been shown to swim towards areas with high levels of progesterone. The hormone also causes the cells to beat their whip-like tails more powerfully to make it through to the egg, a condition called hyperactivity. "We've got good reason to think that the response to progesterone matters, but it's bloody difficult to pin it down," says Publicover. Changing channel The latest studies, led by independent teams in Germany and the United States who agreed to publish their findings simultaneously, show that progesterone activates a molecular channel called CatSper, which floods sperm cells with calcium. © 2011 Nature Publishing Group

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Hormones & Behavior
Link ID: 15111 - Posted: 03.17.2011

By Tina Hesman Saey There’s a little Hannibal Lecter in all of us. But while the famous cannibal dined on chunks of his enemies and friends, most people stick to gnawing on themselves at a microscopic level. In fact, the cells of organisms from yeast to humans regularly engage in self-cannibalism. Cells chew on bits of their cytoplasm — the jellylike substance that fills their bellies — and dine on their own internal organs, although usually without the fava beans and Chianti. It may sound macabre, but gorging on one’s own innards, a process called autophagy, is a means of self-preservation, cleansing and stress management. “It has become evident that it is really an essential or vital function,” says Fulvio Reggiori, a cell biologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. A munch here gets rid of garbage that might otherwise clog the system. A nibble there rids cells of malfunctioning parts. One chomp disposes of invading microbes. In lean times, all that stands between a cell and starvation may be the ability to bite off and recycle bits of itself. And in the last decade or so it has become clear that self-eating can also make the difference between health and disease. “Too much or too little autophagy is a problem,” says Daniel Klionsky, a cell biologist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. A cell that bites off more than it can chew can kill itself, Klionsky says. A few rare genetic diseases are linked to an excess of unsuccessful autophagy: The muscles of people with Danon disease, Pompe disease and X-linked myopathy can become weak after filling up with Pac-Man–like structures that put the bite on the cell’s insides but can’t finish digesting. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2011

Keyword: Huntingtons
Link ID: 15110 - Posted: 03.17.2011