A Massachusetts Institute of Technology-led team has identified distinct midbrain circuits that contributed to both motor and psychiatric symptoms of Parkinson's disease in animal models. Activating the circuits could reverse both types of symptoms.
A central assumption about so-called synonymous mutations, which are changes in the coding sequence of proteins that do not lead to changes in its amino acid sequence, is being questioned by a study published in the June 8, 2022, issue of Nature.
Researchers have long known that the developmental regulator WNT5A plays a role in the dissemination of tumor cells. Now, investigators from Johns Hopkins University have discovered that its suppression plays a role in the growth of metastases after a period of dormancy as well.
Four scientists have shared the 2022 Kavli Prize in neuroscience, "for pioneering the discovery of genes underlying a range of serious brain disorders," together and separately.
By analyzing single-cell responses to ketamine administration, a multinational team of researchers has identified a potassium channel that contributes to the long duration of ketamine administration.
In two separate studies, researchers have identified how peripheral nerve injury can lead to increased pain sensitivity. The studies were published on May 25, 2022, in Nature and May 26, 2022, in Science, respectively. The mechanisms they identify could lead to new therapeutic approaches to chronic pain and/or pain hypersensitivity.
A target-agnostic search has yielded a patient-derived antibody that activated the innate immune system, researchers from Atreca and Stanford University reported in the May 4,2022, issue of the ProceedingsoftheNationalAcademyofSciences.
Age is the biggest risk factor for just about every common disease in high-income countries, which suggests that slowing down cellular aging would have massive effects on individual and public health. Delaying the average onset of Alzheimer’s disease by five years, for example, would roughly halve its prevalence. But in practice, there are no approved anti-aging medications.
“People often think about the genome as the blueprint of the organism, but that’s not really correct,” Steven Quake told reporters at a Science press briefing earlier this week. “The genome is more of a parts list, because every cell type uses different parts.” Quake is president of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub Network, and professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Stanford University.
More than 10% of Americans suffer from chronic pain, and how to prevent acute pain from turning chronic has been a critical question in pain research. But according to a study published in the May 11, 2022, issue of Science Translational Medicine, that approach has it backwards. In several animal models of pain, the resolution of acute pain was an active process. Chronic pain happened when those active processes failed to occur.
