Sci-Tech
Science In Brief: Cognitive Abilities, Personality, Shown to be Hereditary
Wednesday, November 7, 2001
Neuroscientists at UCLA have conclusively shown that personality characteristics and cognitive capacity are hereditary.
Their study, released in the Nov. 5 issue of Nature Neuroscience, graphically demonstrates that neurological diseases and intellectual ability, as measured by intelligence tests, correspond to the subject's parents' own genes.
Paul Thompson, the study's chief investigator and an assistant professor of neurology at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging was surprised at their results.
"We were stunned to see that the amount of gray matter in frontal brain regions was strongly inherited and also predicted an individual's IQ score," he said. "The brain's language areas were also extremely similar in family members. Brain regions that were found to be most similar in family members may be especially vulnerable to diseases that run in families, including some forms of psychosis and dementia."
This research will likely be used in future studies to help scientists understand genetic neurological disorders, like schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, and may help to screen for these diseases in relatives of family members who suffer from those conditions.
PHILLIP MORRIS TRIED TO PREVENT RESEARCH
According to new research at UCSF, Philip Morris, a tobacco company, maintained secretive efforts to alter the standards that were required to prove the damage that secondhand smoke causes.
The research, which was released in the November issue of The American Journal of Public Health, is based on internal tobacco corporate documents, concluded that had Philip Morris' standards been employed, proving malevolent second hand smoke would have been extremely difficult. By spinning their public relations campaign as "sound science", the tobacco firm hoped to construe its own "research" as being scientifically valid by forming The Advancement for Sound Science Coalition. This organization would have masqueraded as a valid group of scientists and politicians which would reject popular scientific conclusions that secondhand smoke was harmful, the report said.
THE NEXT STEP IN UNDERSTANDING BRAIN STEM CELLS
Scientists at UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center have revealed how a gene known as PTEN contributes to the life and death of stem cells in the brain.
This research is a fundamental step in trying to understand how some brain cells develop properly and some develop abnormally, leading to certain brain diseases.
"Our findings could serve as a foundation for addressing any disease where stem-cell biology plays an integral role because PTEN is present in stem cells throughout the body," said Hong Wu, an assistant professor of molecular and medical pharmacology at the UCLA School of Medicine. "The cell-signaling pathways mapped through our research also show promise as clinical targets to attack some forms of brain cancer."
The study may also shed new light on embryonic brain formation, and particularly on brain disorders such as Cowden's disease, which comes from a hereditary mutation in the PTEN gene. The disease causes patients' brains to enlarge abnormally by up to 15 percent and sometimes results in mental retardation.
NEW GENE IN HIV FOUND
A new gene found in HIV may hold the key to revealing its deadly force, researchers at UCSF have shown. The gene, known as Vpr, causes the membrane surrounding the nucleus of the virus to herniate, or to form a "flare" which projects and retracts. Vpr's flares rupture normal cellular components that are tightly regulated from within. These flares change the normal operation of proteins that form a network of filaments known as nuclear lamins.
By altering proteins, the cell loses its ability to carry out normal functions, including cellular division. Viruses can enhance their own reproduction many more times than usual if they hinder cellular duplication. "HIV can infect more new target cells, leading to faster spread of the infection," said Carlos de Noronha, a researcher at the Gladstone Institute of Virology and Immunology, which is affiliated with UCSF.
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