Gene variant associated with better aging, cognitive function, study finds

People who carry a gene variation associated with longevity have better brain cognition and are more resilient to aging, new research has found, paving the way for future treatments for brain aging and disease.

“As we move into the world of personalized medicine, it will be really important and useful to know how one’s genetics, lifestyle and environment affect their trajectory for healthy or unhealthy brain aging,” she added.

How long you sleep may be in your genes

The amount of time people spend sleeping is linked with two regions of their DNA, a new study suggests

“Sleep patterns are influenced by genetic differences,” said study author Dr. Daniel Gottlieb, the director of the Sleep Disorders Center at VA Boston Healthcare System. “This study is one of the first to begin identifying these genetic differences, and will hopefully help us better understand the causes of sleep disorders and their relation to other important conditions, such as diabetes and psychiatric disorders.”

Scientists develop new human stem cells with half a genome

Scientists for the first time have generated a type of embryonic stem cell that carries a single copy of the human genome rather than the usual two, a development that could advance research in gene editing, genetic screening and regenerative medicine.

“What is fundamentally new is we have cells that can divide and renew with a single genome. That is just unprecedented,” said Dieter Egli of Columbia University Medical Center in New York, co-author of the study with Dr. Nissim Benvenisty of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

 

US researchers identify gene network linked to autism

U.S. scientists have identified a molecular network of genes known to contribute to autism spectrum disorders, and they say their finding may help uncover new genes linked to these conditions.

“The study of autism disorders is extremely challenging due to the large number of clinical mutations that occur in hundreds of different human genes associated with autism,” study author Michael Snyder, genetics and personalized medicine professor at Stanford University, said in a news release. “We therefore wanted to see to what extent shared molecular pathways are perturbed by the diverse set of mutations linked to autism in the hope of distilling tractable information that would benefit future studies.”

 

Might Alzheimer’s Disease Be “Foodborne”?

Mounting research shows there’s a compelling link between a particular kind of protein and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

What’s so intriguing about that is this protein, called TDP-43, behaves like toxic and infectious proteins known as prions, which are responsible for the brain destruction that occurs in Mad Cow and Chronic Wasting Disease;1 two types of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

Mad Cow Disease affects cows, while Chronic Wasting Disease is a neurological disease found in deer and elk. As explained in Scientific American:2

“Prions are misshapen yet durable versions of proteins normally present in nerve cells that cause like proteins to misfold and clump together, starting a chain reaction that eventually consumes entire brain regions.

In the past 15 years, scientists have learned that such a process may be at work not only in mad cow and other exotic diseases but also in major neurodegenerative disorders…”