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Researchers Study Mystery of the Toddler Who Won't Grow
kkleiner writes "Twenty-year-old Brooke Greenberg hasn't grown since age five. For the last 15 years, mystified doctors have been unable to explain the cause for Brooke's disorder that has kept her aging in check. At age twenty, she maintains the physical and mental appearance of a toddler. The researchers are now are painstakingly analyzing Brooke’s entire genome in search of unique mutations. Needless to say, it is a formidable undertaking. 'Cracking the code on Brooke’s condition,' [Dr. Eric Shadt] wrote, 'is the proverbial searching for a needle in a haystack, since likely there is one or a small number of letters changed in Brooke’s genome that has caused her condition.' To find the mutation Shadt and his team are using the latest genome sequencing and analysis tools. The strategy is to compare Brooke’s genome to the genomes of her parents and three normal sisters, as well as to other available sequences from the general population, and identify gene mutations that only Brooke has."
4chan is going to love this one.
wtf?
Perpetual kittens.
The Grups are studying her intensely.
BANG BANG
obviously the scientists studying her have far better qualifications and information than i do, but i can't help but think damage to the brain due to the stroke, coma, and brain tumor she suffered at age 4 (right before she stopped developing) could be a more likely cause than her particular genetic makeup.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Please stop writing those retarded comments already. They won't fix your problems and are not nice to read.
Looks like she's actually not aging, and has some sort of ability to remove tumors. Is she being stalked by a giant in a diving suit?
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
If they find this gene and figure out how to control it, the finantial windfall will be staggering for Big Pharma - the "Fountain of Youth" treatment will be very expensive and only available to the rich and famous such as future Brad Pitts and George Clooneys... And possibly the future Leona Helmsleys...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
The syndrome description as given is remarkably like Cretinism. Cretinism typically results from insufficient iodine levels in the diet during early childhood. This person may have mutation(s) which mimic the damage caused in Cretinism.
Pretty sad that the focus of the article and medical attention seemed to be on using her genes for anti-ageing cosmetic treatments instead of curing her. I also found it at bit odd that she is shown in a pram (instead of say an adult wheelchair) and there is a baby cot in the background, these do not seem age appropriate, despite her lack of physical growth.
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It's Fringe's Anomaly XB-6783746
Who had any idea that thousands of years of inbreeding could cause something like this?
Well, technically our article is about aging rather than size, but I found it curious to have learned that a woman who recently died just would not stop growing. Tanya Angus had suffered from gigantism that was induced by hormones released through her tumor-affected growth gland.
obviously the scientists studying her have far better qualifications and information than i do, but i can't help but think damage to the brain due to the stroke, coma, and brain tumor she suffered at age 4 (right before she stopped developing) could be a more likely cause than her particular genetic makeup.
Well from the article they said:
“has no apparent abnormalities in her endocrine system, no gross chromosomal abnormalities, or any of the other disruptions known to occur in humans that can cause developmental issues.”
I assume that the endocrine system would have to be affected in order to cause such stunted growth? If the stroke, coma or brain tumor led to this wouldn't they see that abnormality reflected in these growth regulating systems? Also from the article the researchers claimed:
“Cracking the code on Brooke’s condition,” Shadt wrote, “is the proverbial searching for a needle in a haystack, since likely there is one or a small number of letters changed in Brooke’s genome that has caused her condition.”
Some googling turned up older studies that claim there are no known genetic disorders present or even chromosomal abnormalities and her telomeres seem to be shortening at the normal rate. Also, apparently her body parts are developing out of synchronization. I guess it's possible there is a hidden system that synchronizes development so that your body doesn't develop asymmetrically? And we just haven't found this yet.
... that Kurzweil Singularity bullshit should be left out of the discussion until we fully understand it.
Sort of offtopic but I'm a little disappointed that this unfortunate affliction for this person is being spun as a possible "fountain of eternal youth" in the article. Come on, people. We should be working to better understand this so we can help people
My work here is dung.
Unfortunately, just analyzing genes might not be enough. Gene expression and epigenetics are the other half of the puzzle, and a bit more difficult to discover. Even if you know the code, it's damn difficult to determine where in the body (if anywhere) the code is or isn't active without taking samples all over the place and testing each.
For the computer literate, think of it this way. The researches are disassembling the code of several people to see if there is a difference. But that doesn't tell them what the run time parameters were when a particular bit of code was run (or what inputs it may have had while running). And sampling a memory dump from one CPU in a massively parallel system doesn't give you the whole story either.
Needle meets haystack.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Poor parents.
Clearly no one involved has seen Interview With A Vampire.
Just because someone isn't developing doesn't neccessarily mean they aren't aging.
She may be accumulating some of the various types of damage that we all undergo as part of aging, but just not progressing in maturing to an adult state.
When a child develops from the reproductive cells of the parents effectively all or nearly all of the changes of aging present in the parents are undone. Brooke's genetic makeup may only be blocking SOME of those aging related changes along with blocking maturation.
As time goes on, assuming she stays alive and healthy enough for the studies (Gads, that sounds so cold and clinical. She's a human being with health difficulties not just a research object.) the researchers can see if some aging processes start becoming evident. But, 20 years old is still awfully young to be able to detect those.
What may be possible is to see what genetic changes she has and then try to recreate similar ones in lab animals that age faster than humans.
I wonder how gene damage and telomeres will play into the story of this person's aging.
Speak for yourself.
The kid's the product of a tranya fueled dalliance by her mom after a night out with Balok on his spaceship.
According to Wikipedia, which cites a study in a medical journal, her telomeres are still shortening at the normal rate. This would mean that if she lives to be 70 she'll likely appear to be a miniature 70 year old woman, with wrinkles and all. Since she'll never reach puberty, I have no idea if that will prevent her from experiencing the problems linked to hormones, which people experience, such as osteoporosis.
Jeffty is five too. Maybe in her TV you could see the 25th season of Star Trek TNG.
Just not all at the same time. Her left eye is not the eye of a five year old.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
This is even hotter instead, and she randomly sleeps for at least thousands of hours consecutively, and hyper sexuality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vR4Ajo4yGUs
Twitter: @dainsanefh
Maybe she's Wolverine, and her immune system is attacking aging as an illness, but it kicked in at age 5 instead of adulthood.
You never expect irony, do you?
Want to be a professional wrestler? Visit www.iyfwrestling.com
@iyfwrestling
Katie Couric is afflicted with soft focus syndrome. It also affects Diane Sawyer. She takes a personal interest in this since thye may be able to find a cure.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
I LOL'd pretty hard XD
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Sounds like a Fringe event. We need Walter Bishop, Olivia Dunham and the rest of the Fringe team to investigate.... :-)
She regenerates, but the regeneration harms her mind and growth rate. She's Deadpool if Deadpool got his powers as a toddler. Hmmm, he has "comic awareness".. I wonder if she knows if this universe is a simulation or not.
Comment? I don't need no stinking comment!
She decided never to grow up when she heard her father declare that she would become a grocer.
Nyh
Longevity was not mentioned in the article, but I did ponder the question of whether what the scientists find may actually lead to "the fountain of youth." Imagine if you could suddenly stop aging once you reach your "preferred" age!
They've enough comparison of parental chromosomes to tell there are about 30 random gene mutations inherited from each parent. They'll have to sort for these whether there is one or more on a significant gene.
Brooke should patent and copyright her genome before anyone else does, else she might have to pay license or royalties if she ever has children, or worse.
What if Issac Newton was still alive? Nikola Tesla? Thomas Edison? Henry Ford? Max Planck? Albert Einstein?
On the other hand, what if Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin were still alive?
or it's a sword immortal and the only way for her to die and not come back is for the head to come off.
Subject 0203949.a19 ...
Gene Manipulation, regenerative longevity.
Results:Failure, not useful as super soldier to dominate mankind.
Obviously she's just a character on a very long running TV show, probably a cartoon like the Simpsons.
5 years ago, this would have been a formidable undertaking
but with the cooperation of her parents and siblings, and with todays technology, not so much
a good quality draft genome - say 50x coverage on an Illumina hi seq - is maybe 5-10,000 dollars; you can do the samples in parallel, so 5 people isn't 5x the cost.
(and the computational load goes down a lot with all that family)
what would really help would be a larger family - maybe in the interest of science, her parents can be purusaded to have another 20 kids, in the hope of finding a few more odd ones; that would allow the responsible mutation (s) to be IDed with a high degree of certaintl (assumign this is genetic and not, say viral)
No, she is the key to never developing past the physical or mental age of 5.
If never developing past age 5 is what will help Homo survive for the next 8000 centuries, all we need to do is somehow figure out how to suppress the Morlock mutation.
Is she being stalked by a giant in a diving suit?
That depends. Does this giant drop bombs?
If her body isn't aging...
The real study is in Washington DC, where for decades, adults act like spoiled brats, never really growing up. Cater to their whims and they want more. Demand that they sit up straight and act like adults, they become more belligerent, even to the point of rebelliousness. Spank them and they declare war against you. It's time to put RECALL on the ballot.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Finally something about biology, biotech and maybe even life extension. Give us a break from the usual 3D printing hype and private space fanaticism.
If life has taught me anything it's that in most cases there are no coincidences. The coma and such that happened to her around the time she stopped growing are significant. They may not be the cause, but they most almost certainly share a common cause.
I know a kid who is taking hormones to reach full size because the endocrine system was damaged by radiation. There is apparently a time limit on that, you have to reach a certain physical age before a certain chronological age or you get stuck. I'm not sure they even understand why that is so, just that it is so. Also, the treatment while working, isn't going so well - kid may be a little short - and they don't know why. All the levels are right with treatment.
I'm going with 50/50 that there is even a genetic cause to this unique case. And if so, I'd go with under 10 percent chance it's a mutation in coding DNA. But please do continue, if it is DNA the discovery should be well worth the effort.
!growing != !aging
Quite true, but it is difficult to distinguish the two prior to maturity. Normal 20 year old's are not perceptively aged either. They are in their prime. No parts of their bodies have noticeably declined. It would be much more instructive to check up this little girl when she is 30 or, better yet, 40.
My first thought was....
"Would it still be considered CP and/or pedophilia?"
Internet...you have ruined me...
Maybe this makes me a bad person, but my first thought was "that's awesome!" My kids were so cute and fun at that age. I'm sure it's more stressful if you live through it, but for now I've got the fantasy....
She's infant sized.
Wikipedia says she's 30 inches tall, 16 pounds.
My almost nine month old daughter is 26 pounds, around 30 inches. That's like 99th percentile in size, but still infant sized.
An average 5 year old is 40 inches, 40 pounds.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
...but in the Garden of Eden there were two trees of note, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil and the Tree of Life.
After man sinned (by eating from the former tree), God banished them from the garden so that they would not eat from the tree of life and live forever.
I find it interesting that when they were innocent God was all cool with them being immortal, but when they became sinful/morally flawed/infected with evil, God's like, "These schmoes as immortals? Nope. Nuh huh. This will not end well."
For years I've been saying we need something for dogs to keep them as puppies, so they're small and cute for life.
The problem is that you'd need enough time so that you could properly train them ... you'd want to make sure they could at least make it past the 'potty training' phase, or there'd be problems. (I think the litter training for cats happens faster).
But if you retard the mental development, that'd mean they could do all of the dumb puppy things that people find so cute. (Or cats ... I remember when my boss's cat was scared of a laser pointer, before she decided she should chase the dot)
And as for the person who pointed out that 5 years is middle aged for a cat ... we have dog years to work with. So the dog would be um .. (12 * 5 / 7 ) = 8.5 months old.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Sorry to be blunt, but she really looks like there's some kind of mental retardation. She looks worn, her teeth are too large, and if she really had the mental age of 5 she would walk and talk, not sit in a stroller like that. If you look at the pictures shown in the video it is totally obvious she is getting older (in her own sense). Makes me sad, really. Hope they get something good out of this.
Are you kidding me? This man is my hero. I check his posts daily.
Never stop FAFI. For Laura!
Very sad story, I hope they can find some way to give her a decent life.
How many generations of "kids shows" have they had to suffer thru now?
I can't get the theme song to Team Umizoomi out of my head as it is!
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
why so negative?
She's a true Toys 'R' Us kid.
This is Jeffty is Five!
It might have something to do with her jacked up left eye.