[HN Gopher] The protein Reelin keeps popping up in brains that r...
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The protein Reelin keeps popping up in brains that resist aging and
Alzheimer's
Author : melling
Score : 92 points
Date : 2024-07-29 14:27 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.npr.org)
| Khelavaster wrote:
| Reelin is transcribed 4 genes away from acetylcholinesterase. And
| is a core collagen component. No wonder it's tied to
| Alzheimer's..
| ghotli wrote:
| Is there some place on the internet that shows this "4 genes
| away" evidence? I'm imagining that there is some tool that
| those involved in this work are aware of that I am not.
| bglazer wrote:
| The UCSC genome browser is the best way to find where genes
| are mapped to in DNA.
|
| Here's a link that shows ACHE (acetylcholinesterase) and RELN
| (reelin) in the same view.
|
| https://genome.ucsc.edu/cgi-
| bin/hgTracks?db=hg38&lastVirtMod...
| ghotli wrote:
| Very cool, thank you!
| pc86 wrote:
| "Reelin is transcribed 4 genes away from $ENZYME" sounds like
| it is of the same general category as "Humans share 98% of
| their DNA with a chimpanzee and 97% of it with a banana" or
| whatever. Is that me just not understanding it? I would think 4
| genes could have huge impact on functionality.
| jldugger wrote:
| I believe they're using "4 genes away" as a proxy of basepair
| distance, not similarity. It's all very messy business but
| it's not unreasonable that transcription promoters for those
| other genes also promote reelin transcription.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Can you make any future predictions of this type? That could
| speed up research.
| bglazer wrote:
| I'm not sure how you're getting the 4 genes away thing, I'm
| seeing like 20-30 genes and more than 2 megabases of distance
| in between RLN and ACHE. I'd be surprised if they were even in
| the same topologically associated domain.
| highfrequency wrote:
| "Although the research focused on a single person, it
| reverberated through the world of brain science and even got the
| attention of the (then) acting director of the National
| Institutes of Health, Lawrence Tabak. "Sometimes careful study of
| even just one truly remarkable person can lead the way to
| fascinating discoveries with far-reaching implications," Tabak
| wrote in his blog post about the discovery."
|
| Very cool - they found an extended family in Medellin, Colombia
| where virtually everyone got early-onset Alzheimer's. Except for
| one guy. Studying his genome revealed a variant related to
| Reelin, and subsequent studies suggest that Reelin is indeed
| neuroprotective.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> they found an extended family in Medellin, Colombia where
| virtually everyone got early-onset Alzheimer's._
|
| That must be one interesting family reunion. So many new family
| members every time!
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Pretty good joke, in the genre, but not the right setting. (I
| avoid comedians who specialise in this genre, because I find
| it deeply upsetting, but that's just me.)
| zdragnar wrote:
| Having watched what it did to family members, it's hard to
| me, personally, find any joke about Alzheimer's or dementia
| funny.
|
| The structure and phrasing work to tickle the part of my
| mind that enjoys juxtaposition, though, so that was nice at
| least.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Some people use humor to cope with unpleasant things. No
| offense is intended.
| jfengel wrote:
| Intended or not, people do get hurt by it.
|
| We've all got different ways of handling it so the best
| we can hope for is some mutual compassion and
| thoughtfulness. One factor in that is to realize that the
| effect is more relevant than the intention.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Some people get hurt by normal everyday items and things.
| Trying to avoid hurting anyone turns you into a person
| who would hurt everyone.
| shagie wrote:
| Society of the Mind has a section on humor (27.6) that
| poses a theory of humor (see also
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_humor ) and
| jokes that I find somewhat persuasive.
|
| One of the ways that we learn is "do X -> reward" and
| "don't do X -> no reward". But this is only training us
| one way - a positive way - about what is desirable.
|
| How do you learn what is _not_ desirable. "Don't touch
| the oven when its on" is something that you learn through
| "do Y -> punishment" ... but is there a "don't do Y ->
| reward" path that can be found? Is there a way to
| positively train the "don't do Y" paths?
| A mother says to her son "don't forget to sweep the
| corners." The son replies "don't worry, I swept
| everything into the corner."
|
| You are rewarded for laughing at that joke. Why? Because
| it is something that you _shouldn 't_ do. In this joke,
| we have expressed an undesirable state to be able to
| learn from in a rewarding way rather than a punishing
| way.
|
| And somewhere, long ago, I recall a web page that had a
| short summary of each theory of humor and a joke that was
| not funny according to that theory. I doubt there will
| ever be a Grand Unified Theory of Humor.
| bdcravens wrote:
| The almost daily information I'm hearing about Alzheimer's
| research is reassuring. My wife's grandmother died of it, and her
| mother is probably in the first 1/4 of its development. Today's
| gains may be too late to help her, but I'm hoping they will
| develop into useful treatments before my wife would start
| developing symptoms.
| Theodores wrote:
| My favourite research is that quality nutrition is what you
| need, however, this means a whole food, plant based diet. What
| that means is no animal fats or refined animal fats as these
| have been blocking arteries since the 1950s, or whenever it was
| that Ancel Keys did his landmark studies that made saturated
| fats bad.
|
| I am okay with that.
|
| The keto diet community believe that Ancel Keys was not right
| and that sugar is the enemy that causes all of the problems,
| probably including blocked brain arteries. The whole food,
| plant based diet does not include refined sugar, so, hedge your
| bets by staying off the animal fats and added sugar. By staying
| off the sugar, that eliminates processed foods that invariably
| have refined fats and oils such as palm oil and much else that
| gets saturated in processing.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Citation needed
| vhcr wrote:
| This is so out of touch, having a healthy diet is obviously
| going to help reduce the risk of getting Alzheimer's disease,
| but it is in no way the ultimate cure.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Humans have been eating animal fat for millenia. Cutting
| excess sugar is a good plan though. We would have gotten some
| from fruits and berries but nothing like the quantities that
| are included in many foods today.
| akira2501 wrote:
| Exceptionally off topic but the name seems appropriate and
| definitely reminds me of a Steely Dan song:
|
| "Are you reelin' in the years?
|
| Stowin' away the time"
| nickburns wrote:
| My dad would really appreciate this crack. ;) Him and I got to
| see them live together before Walter Becker passed. :\
| AlexErrant wrote:
| > Purified recombinant Reelin was injected bilaterally into the
| ventricles of wild-type mice. We demonstrate that a single in
| vivo injection of Reelin increased activation of adaptor protein
| Disabled-1 and cAMP-response element binding protein after 15
| min. These changes correlated with increased dendritic spine
| density, increased hippocampal CA1 long-term potentiation (LTP),
| and enhanced performance in associative and spatial learning and
| memory.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3166788/
|
| Published 2011. It's been a while... I wonder what it would take
| to reach human trials.
| trallnag wrote:
| Humans have to become mice to advance
| benregenspan wrote:
| Would expect to see research focused on compounds that increase
| Reelin expression too, in addition to direct supplementation. A
| mouse study a couple years later showing nicotine increasing
| Reelin expression: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23385624/
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