Word: amino
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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There are two forms of Amyloid beta protein which are in the brain--one with 40 amino acid molecules per polypeptide chain and the other with...
...proteins in Hall's brain were changing, however. Ordinarily made up of tiny strands of intertwined amino acids, the complex molecules had begun to assume a very different shape, collapsing into sticky sheets. Before long, these gummy structures began to clump sloppily together, creating pits and divots where there had once been vital brain tissue. Within months Hall was delusional and bedridden. Not long after, he was dead...
After locating three other nematode clock genes, Hekimi went looking for similar ones in people. He found one whose amino acid schematic nearly mirrored Clock-1's. "The Clock-1 genes in the two species are so very similar," he says, "that it's possible the whole clock system works the same way. If we find all of the human clock genes, we can perhaps slow them down just a little, so we can extend life...
...first place, and that involves slowing the onset of osteoporosis, a disease that makes bones brittle. Among menopausal women, estrogen-replacement therapy has gained wide usage, despite its risks of depression and endometrial cancer. A newer treatment that received federal approval just last year involves the use of amino-bisphosphonates, a class of drugs that inhibit the cells that govern bone loss...
There is something to the panspermia theory, however. Even scientists who reject it acknowledge that some of life's building blocks probably had extraterrestrial origins. Indeed, they now believe that everything from organic chemicals to amino acids, the constituents of proteins, was carried in by the comets, asteroids and meteorites. And if life happened to form elsewhere in the solar system first, muses biochemist Gerald Joyce of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, then it's at least possible that something more complex could have been included in the cargo--not necessarily a living organism but a molecular...