Word: miceli
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...baby was born, doctors were struck by the infant's extraordinary muscularity. By 7 months, he had a bodybuilder's pumped-up proportions. Researchers determined that the baby had a double dose of a mutation that inactivates a protein that restrains muscle development (a mutation also seen in mice and cattle). While scientists hope that pinpointing the mutation will help them learn how to reverse muscle wasting from disease, they also know that someday somebody will try to parlay it into a performance-enhancing drug. --By David Bjerklie
...Pfizer, researchers have stumbled upon an agent that curbs the brain's attraction to fatty foods--but so far, only in mice. More studies will show if the same effect occurs in people...
...other end of the spectrum are therapies that aim directly at fat tissue. Scientists at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston are trying to starve fat cells by attacking proteins embedded in the blood vessels that feed those cells. In experiments on obese mice, their excess fat melted away in a matter of weeks. Not only did this strategy eliminate fat tissue--the animals lost 30% of their body weight--but mice that were dangerously overweight quickly regained their health. In fact, early signs of diabetes reversed, fat no longer accumulated in the liver, and cholesterol and glucose levels dropped...
DIED. JOERGEN NASH, 84, provocative Danish artist and author of 42 books who took responsibility for beheading Copenhagen's famed Little Mermaid statue with a hacksaw in 1963; in Copenhagen. In the 1960s he engaged in such antics as blowing whistles to interrupt Parliament, unleashing mice at the Danish Literature Academy and tossing firecrackers onstage at the Copenhagen Royal Theater...
...almost too good to be true. Researchers have designed a drug that targets and destroys the blood vessels that feed fat cells. The fat cells die and those extra pounds melt away--but only, so far, in rodents. In one experiment, mice that had doubled in size on a high-fat diet were back to normal weight in just a month, no matter what they ate. "If even a fraction of what we found in mice relates to human biology, then we are cautiously optimistic that there may be a new way to think about reversing obesity," says Renata Pasqualini...