Word: rna
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Human Trial. A major objection to the idea of injecting a "memory molecule" is that injected RNA is broken down biochemically into much smaller molecules before it can reach the brain. But a drug that increases RNA production in the brain itself might get around this objection. Psychiatrist D. Ewen Cameron, who has tried to improve oldsters' failing memories with injections of RNA from yeast (with still-disputed results), is now testing Cylert at the VA hospital in Albany, N.Y. Says Cylert's co-developer, Biochemist Glasky: "We are going to have trials on thousands of people...
...Abbott Laboratories, where Biochemists Alvin J. Glasky, 32, and Lionel Simon, 31, worked in their spare time on a theory of memory developed by Sweden's Neurobiologist Holger Hyden (TIME, Feb. 10, 1961). According to this theory, memory depends on a process in which molecules of ribonucleic acid (RNA), or possibly subordinate protein molecules, are coded to record a particular event and then become lodged in certain nerve cells...
Rats & Goldfish. The Abbott researchers reasoned that learning and memory might be improved by boosting the supply of RNA, and hit upon a seemingly harmless chemical, magnesium pemoline (tradenamed Cylert), which increases RNA synthesis twofold or threefold. Working with Dr. Nicholas P. Plotnikoff, the researchers put Cylert in rat feed, then placed the animals in a chamber where they had to learn to avoid an electric shock. Rats on Cylert learned after only two or three trials; rats with no Cylert took eight to ten trials. Moreover, the Cylert rats remembered their lesson as long as six months, while untreated...
Related evidence discussed last week suggests that RNA extracted from the brains of trained animals can be used to accelerate learning when injected into untrained animals. Converse evidence that chemicals are involved in forgetting came from the University of Michigan's Dr. Bernard W. Agranoff, who reported that trained goldfish forgot how to avoid a shock, and untrained fish did not learn as well after injections of the antibiotic puromycin...
Reaching Forward. So far, these hypotheses have been substantially proved for bacteria, and there is convincing evidence of the existence of "messenger RNA" in mammalian cells. As a result, there is a great temptation to extrapolate all the way from microbe to man and assume that long-dormant viruses may belatedly trigger cancerous changes in human cells. The evidence for this, so far, is extremely tenuous. But the Nobel Prize committee, which has sometimes been as much as 30 years late in recognizing achievement, has now reached toward the future in making its 1965 award...