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Sight Seen: Gene Therapy Restores Vision in Both Eyes: Scientific American - 0 views

  • gene therapy to treat blindness in 12 adults and children with Leber's congenital amaurosis (LCA), a rare inherited eye disease that destroys vision by killing photoreceptors—light-sensitive cells in the retina at the back of the eye.
  • genetic mutations in retinal cells. One mutated gene that causes the disorder is named RPE65. An enzyme encoded by RPE65 helps break down a derivative of vitamin A called retinol into a substance that photoreceptors need to detect light and send signals to the brain.
  • injected a harmless virus carrying normal copies of RPE65
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  • subsequently began producing the enzyme
  • proved so much they no longer met the criteria for legal blindness
  • injected the functional genes into the previously untreated eye
  • improved as soon as two weeks after the operation: They could navigate an obstacle course, even in dim light, avoiding objects that had tripped them up before, as well as recognize people's faces and read large signs
  • brains were much more responsive to optical input as well.
  • second round of gene therapy further strengthened the brain's response to the initially treated eye as well as the newly treated one
  • that neuroplasticity plays a role
  • visual cortex responding to the newly flowing channel of information from the second eye bolster activity in areas of the visual cortex responding to the initially treated eye.
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    Article about how the enzyme produced from gene therapy is used to cure blindness in an eye genetic disease.
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Epigenetics Seeks Clues to Mental Illness in Genes' Life Story - Science in 2011 - NYTi... - 0 views

  • epigenetics, the study of how people’s experience and environment affect the function of their genes.
  • Studies suggest that such add-on, or epigenetic, markers develop as an animal adapts to its environment, whether in the womb or out in the world — and the markers can profoundly affect behavior.
  • In studies of rats, researchers have shown that affectionate mothering alters the expression of genes, allowing them to dampen their physiological response to stress. These biological buffers are then passed on to the next generation: rodents and nonhuman primates biologically primed to handle stress tend to be more nurturing to their own offspring, and the system is thought to work similarly in humans.
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  • the offspring of parents who experience famine are at heightened risk for developing schizophrenia, some research suggests — perhaps because of the chemical signatures on the genes that parents pass on.
  • in some people with autism, epigenetic markers had silenced the gene which makes the receptor for the hormone oxytocin. Oxytocin oils the brain’s social circuits, and is critical in cementing relationships; a brain short on receptors for it would most likely struggle in social situations.
  • In one large study of people with schizophrenia, researchers at Johns Hopkins are analyzing blood and other data to see whether the degree of epigenetic variation is related to the inherited risk of developing the disorder. In another, researchers at Tufts are studying the genes of animals dependent on opiates to see how epigenetic alterations caused by drug exposure affect the opiate sensitivity of the animals’ offspring.
Oranicha Jumreornvong

EBSCOhost: The orchid children - 0 views

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    Features Are you an orchid or a dandelion? Are you a sensitive flower or a hardier type? It may all be down to an intriguing set of genes, as David Dobbs finds out WHY are some children better at sharing than others? One attempt to find out uses what you could call the "Bamba test".
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