Stargazer Gene Provides New Clues To Calcium Channel Defects In Absence Epilepsy
... mystery, theseizures are known to result from the misfiring of neurons in the brain. Insteadof transmitting electrical impulses in an orderly manner, epileptic neurons fireall at once, creating a "storm" that disrupts normal brain function. Half of allhuman epilepsies are estimated to have a genetic basis, Dr...New treatment may relieve chronic pain, as reported in the 19 November issue of Science
...for example, for genes that are "turned on" in the misfiring neurons. It may then be possible someday to use gene therapy to correct the problem. For the moment, Mantyh and his colleagues are planning a toxicology study to learn whether the neurotoxin they used in the rats would be safe to use the same way in...Nearly identical controls of immune genes in mice and humans hint at new asthma treatment
...emonstrated a potential strategy to silence their misfiring and quell the asthma response. In back-to-back papers in April and May, researchers at UC San Francisco and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBL) report that a stretch of DNA controlling all three cytokine genes is so similar in humans and...UCLA scientists eavesdrop on cellular conversations by making mice 'glow' with firefly protein
...isease. "Human disease is often caused by a single misfiring during a series of intracellular communications," he said. "If we can understand and monitor what goes wrong, we may be able to develop drugs to block or improve cells' ability to process their proteins' internal conversations." Cells rely on recepto...How postnatal experience influences brain development and brain function
...evelopment does not occur, leaving an abundance of misfiring synapses that merely create noise rather than serve communication. "You have a lot of incompatible synapses. They are thin; their morphology is altered," he said. "These synapses are doing something, but they are probably very weak. In this syndro...