Word: braine
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...control subjects - identified genetic variations in a region of chromosome 5 that appears to play a pivotal role in about 15% of cases of autism. What makes this region particularly fascinating is that it seems to regulate gene-coding for proteins that are essential to forming connections in the brain. This fits well with earlier research - including imaging and autopsy studies - that suggest autism is essentially a disorder of poor connections in the brain. (See pictures of a school for children with autism...
...region of DNA that codes for two proteins called cadherin 9 and 10. These are sticky substances involved in a process known as neuronal cell adhesion. "They sit at the synapse, and when the nerves come together, these molecules adhere to the nerve," essentially fusing a connection in the brain, explains Dr. Hakon Harkonarson, director of the Center for Applied Genomics at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and a lead author of the study. Preliminary research suggests that cadherin 10 is very active in wiring the frontal cortex of the brain during fetal development...
...genetic change: deletions and duplications of genes. While there are many such changes associated with autism, most are very rare. This paper, however, found an intriguing pattern among two genes already linked to autism and nine newly identified targets. Most play a role in two key systems in the brain. One is the same brain-wiring system - neural cell adhesion - implicated in the first paper. The second is a set of housekeeping proteins - the ubiquitin system - that whisk away old brain connections and set the stage for new ones...
What's exciting to researchers is that the confusing array of genes associated with autism are beginning to make some kind of sense. "We are starting to get convergence around genes that affect how synapses and connections in the brain are made and maintained ... particularly in the frontal lobe" says Geraldine Dawson, chief science officer for Autism Speaks, an advocacy group that, along with the National Institutes of Health, funds the AGRE database. The hope, says Dawson, a co-author of the two Nature papers, is that researchers could ultimately develop drugs that affect the biochemical pathways associated with these...
...guess what? I suspect that when it's their turn to buy their first new cars, they'll be looking at the brands they know best, just as their father did a generation ago. Their old man wishes, in his heart, that they could buy a Pontiac. But his brain, and his wallet, dictate otherwise. Pontiac didn't give a damn when it lost me as a buyer 30 years ago, but I find myself profoundly saddened by its passing. Turns out that I may have cared more than they...