Nerve-cell precursors can turn into two types of brain cell besides nerve cells.
ECONOMIST: Brain development may be influenced by genetic parasites
E. appears later in life as well, because it takes a long time for the initial trauma to give rise to nerve-cell breakdown and death.
Since 30% of the fatty constituents of nerve-cell membranes are DHA molecules, keeping your DHA levels topped up is part of having a healthy brain.
Some areas identified as particularly human are the regulation of the cone cells of the retina (which are involved in colour vision) and the regulation of nerve-cell growth.
Meanwhile, Targacept, a firm based in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is looking at another group of nerve-cell proteins, the nicotinergic receptors, whose activation has been shown to increase alertness and may fend off cognitive decline.
The physical manifestations of the disease that Alois Alzheimer noticed in 1906 are sticky plaques of one type of protein, now known as beta-amyloid, and nerve-cell-engulfing tangles of a second type, called tau protein.
With the help of Chiara Cirelli, who also works at the University of Wisconsin, Dr Tononi has created a mutant fruit fly that sleeps only two or three hours a night. (A normal fly sleeps between eight and 14 hours.) The mutation itself is in a gene for a nerve-cell protein of a type known as an ion channel.
Scientists were able to detect signals from heart and nerve cell electro-flesh made this way, allowing them to measure changes in response to certain drugs.
ENGADGET: Harvard scientists grow human cells onto nanowire scaffold to form 'cyborg' skin
The researchers were led to this idea when they scanned the stem-cell precursors of nerve cells with a device called a gene chip.
ECONOMIST: Brain development may be influenced by genetic parasites
The other concept, pursued by Pfizer, Japan's Ono Pharmaceutical, the AstraZeneca-Renovis partnership and numerous other firms, is to find a brain-cell protector that could be used to stabilize nerve cells and prevent further damage.
They do so by starting chain-reactions that result in the addition and subtraction of molecular sub-units known as phosphate groups from particular proteins in the nerve cell being stimulated.
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