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Famous Breast Cancer Gene Could Affect Brain Growth
sciencehabit writes "The cancer gene BRCA1, which keeps tumors in the breast and ovaries at bay by producing proteins that repair damaged DNA, may also regulate brain size. Mice carrying a mutated copy of the gene have 10-fold fewer neurons and had other brain abnormalities, a new study (abstract) suggests. Such dramatic effects on brain size and function are unlikely in human carriers of BRCA1 mutations, the authors of the study note, but they propose the findings could shed light on the gene's role in brain evolution."
FTA: More than half the women with a mutated copy of the BRCA1 gene will develop breast cancer...
I suspect this is the marker used to inspire Mrs. Pitt to preemptively undergo the double-mastectomy... cue the small brain/breast jokes.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Or do I have to read TFA?
So a mutated copy caused the results in mice. How about unmutated copies? They did not answer the question did they?
Shouldn't it be infamous? After all Infamous means it's more than famous. It's not only famous, it's infamous
On the plus side, in men it will stop breast cancer and give us small brains. I think women gets the most out this mutation.
I have one of the BRCA1 mutations (there are several known varieties) that causes a greatly heightened risk of some cancers. Not just breast cancer in women, but a very high risk of ovarian cancer as well. For both women and men, the risks of pancreatic, colon, and others are raised. For men, the risk of prostate cancer is greatly increased. The pancreatic and ovarian cancers are especially nasty, but all risk factors here require heightened vigilance for continual screening throughout life.
I have quite a few family members with the mutation and many without it. There are just as many idiotic, brain defective family members both with it and without. I am not one of them.
So, that pretty much solves the science on that one. Next?
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wik...
"In the future, women will have breasts all over." - David Byrne
the dramatic effects documented in the mice in the study are unlikely to occur in women with a BRCA1 mutation, who still have some functioning BRCA1, compared with the mice who had none at all.
From skimming google, it looks like women with a Brca1 mutation have one functional copy, that mutations in both would cause death in embryonic stages. Mice lacking both copies of Brca1 are dead before birth. The mice here had the gene only lost in neural tissue.
The current finding doesn't seem like a surprise. It seems to only be news because of marketing. Brca1 is probably the closest thing to a gene with a household name due to the breast cancer tie in and the patent insanity. Neural stem cells seem to have higher requirements for a lot of "housekeeping" genes. And Brca1 regulates DNA repair. As I said, we already knew that the gene was important for cell survival. This paper isn't even the first to knock it out in specific tissues.
You take away a gene critical for cell survival and neural stem cells die? Wow, what a shock. Hey, I have evidence that FIRE kills neural stem cells! I should write that up and send it to PNAS too!
(Joking aside, I haven't fully read the paper. It looks like good science, I don't object to it being published in PNAS, just saying this isn't all that surprising.)
I have not read the article.
I know that an inverse relationship between brain size and breast size has been postulated for decades.
Woman with sick tits are stupid, news at 11...
I think that as we make more and more links between genes and how they affect the development of our body, we will find out they are crosslinked with other functions. Its like bug ridden code where fixing one bug causes another to pop up.
Our DNA codebase has been around for quite a long time. Perhaps it is as old as some of the first life to form on Earth. I would hazard a guess that it is ridden with "bugs" and debugging it will become a tricky operation. I also suspect that there are no magic genes that can turn things on or off with the flick of a switch without changing the state of another piece of genetic code.
Maybe we need to become more functional in order to reduce side effects :)
The human brain has undergone tremendous evolutionary changes in a relatively short period of time. One of the most amazing pieces of nature's engineering was pressured to become even more amazing in just a few million years. It's quite possible there are some downsides from this genetic "rush job".
Table-ized A.I.
The clear on the order of crystal advantages are easy-peasy to imagine. So you think you'd rather been born pretty?
Maybe not. Though intelligence and pretty are not mutually exclusive, human nature suggests that if you are able to ply advantage on your looks, you're not going to study as hard as the poor girl who looks like her big-nosed brother with long hair. (Ever have a friend who's sister wasn't completely unattractive, but looked just like him in the face?) And then one day, despite all the organic food, magical facial creams, clever aesthetic surgeons, and your best intentions... shoot, you're old with no particular skill set. Yes sir, old age is the revenge of the girls who had to work a little harder on merit.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway