Category Archives: Transhuman News

December 24, 2013

redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports Your Universe Online

The same gene that influences bonding between mothers and their infant children, as well as the attachment between partners in a monogamous relationship, could also be involved in the ability to remember faces.

The gene in question is the oxytocin receptor, a member of the G-protein coupled receptor family which functions receives chemical signals from the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin. The receptors modulate a variety of behaviors, including stress, anxiety, bonding, maternal behavior, social memory and recognition.

In a study scheduled to appear in an online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report that the discovery could help diagnose and treat autism spectrum disorder and other conditions in which a persons ability to process social information is adversely affected.

In addition, the authors report that the findings could also help experts develop new methods of improving social cognition skills in patients suffering from serious psychiatric disorders. Researchers from Emory University, University College London and the University of Tampere in Finland were involved in the research.

According to author Dr. Larry Young of the Emory University School of Medicine and Center for Translational Social Neuroscience (CTSN), this is the first paper to demonstrate that variation in the oxytocin receptor gene has an impact on an individuals facial recognition skill.

He and his colleagues stated that while oxytocin plays an important role in promoting our ability to recognize one another about one-third of the population possesses only the genetic variant that negatively impacts that ability, the university said in a statement. They say this finding may help explain why a few people remember almost everyone they have met while others have difficulty recognizing members of their own family.

Dr. Youngs team analyzed 198 families with one autistic child, as those families had previously been found to demonstrate a wide range of variability when it came to the ability to recognize faces. Approximately 66 percent of the families hailed from the UK, while the rest of them resided in Finland, the university said.

Previously, researchers from Emory University discovered that the oxytocin receptor played a vital role in olfactory-based social recognition in rodents. While attempting to discern whether or not the same gene played a similar role in people, they looked at how subtle differences in the structure of the receptor gene impacted facial memory skills in parents, autistic children and their non-autistic brothers and sisters.

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Gene That Influences Bonding Also Found To Impact Facial Recognition

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Newswise Working in mice, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis report developing a gene delivery method long sought in the field of gene therapy: a deactivated virus carrying a gene of interest that can be injected into the bloodstream and make its way to the right cells.

In this early proof-of-concept study, the scientists have shown that they can target tumor blood vessels in mice without affecting healthy tissues.

Most current gene therapies in humans involve taking cells out of the body, modifying them and putting them back in, said David T. Curiel, MD, PhD, distinguished professor of radiation oncology. This limits gene therapy to conditions affecting tissues like the blood or bone marrow that can be removed, treated and returned to the patient. Today, even after 30 years of research, we cant inject a viral vector to deliver a gene and have it go to the right place.

But now, investigators at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine say they have designed a targetable injectable vector a deactivated virus that homes in on the inner lining of tumor blood vessels and does not get stuck in the liver, a problem that has plagued past attempts.

The findings are reported Dec. 23 in PLOS ONE.

Building on their own previous work and others, the researchers engineered this viral vector to turn on its gene payload only in the abnormal blood vessels that help fuel and nurture tumor growth. But unlike most therapies aimed at tumor vasculature, the goal is not to destroy the cancers blood supply.

We dont want to kill tumor vessels, said senior author Jeffrey M. Arbeit, MD, professor of urologic surgery and of cell biology and physiology. We want to hijack them and turn them into factories for producing molecules that alter the tumor microenvironment so that it no longer nurtures the tumor. This could stop the tumor growth itself or cooperate with standard chemotherapy and radiation to make them more effective. One advantage of this strategy is that it could be applied to nearly all of the most common cancers affecting patients.

In theory, Arbeit pointed out, this approach could be applied to diseases other than cancer in which the blood vessels are abnormal, including conditions like Alzheimers disease, multiple sclerosis or heart failure.

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Gene Therapy Method Targets Tumor Blood Vessels

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

23-Dec-2013

Contact: Lisa Newbern lisa.newbern@emory.edu 404-727-7709 Emory Health Sciences

New findings suggest the oxytocin receptor, a gene known to influence mother-infant bonding and pair bonding in monogamous species, also plays a special role in the ability to remember faces. This research has important implications for disorders in which social information processing is disrupted, including autism spectrum disorder. In addition, the finding may lead to new strategies for improving social cognition in several psychiatric disorders.

A team of researchers from Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, the University College London in the United Kingdom and University of Tampere in Finland made the discovery, which will be published in an online Early Edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

According to author Larry Young, PhD, of Yerkes, the Department of Psychiatry in Emory's School of Medicine and Emory's Center for Translational Social Neuroscience (CTSN), this is the first study to demonstrate that variation in the oxytocin receptor gene influences face recognition skills. He and co-author David Skuse point out the implication that oxytocin plays an important role in promoting our ability to recognize one another, yet about one-third of the population possesses only the genetic variant that negatively impacts that ability. They say this finding may help explain why a few people remember almost everyone they have met while others have difficulty recognizing members of their own family.

Skuse is with the Institute of Child Health, University College London, and the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, NHS Foundation Trust, London.

Young, Skuse and their research team studied 198 families with a single autistic child because these families were known to show a wide range of variability in facial recognition skills; two-thirds of the families were from the United Kingdom, and the remainder from Finland.

The Emory researchers previously found the oxytocin receptor is essential for olfactory-based social recognition in rodents, like mice and voles, and wondered whether the same gene could also be involved in human face recognition. They examined the influence of subtle differences in oxytocin receptor gene structure on face memory competence in the parents, non-autistic siblings and autistic child, and discovered a single change in the DNA of the oxytocin receptor had a big impact on face memory skills in the families. According to Young, this finding implies that oxytocin likely plays an important role more generally in social information processing, which is disrupted in disorders such as autism.

Additionally, this study is remarkable for its evolutionary aspect. Rodents use odors for social recognition while humans use visual facial cues. This suggests an ancient conservation in genetic and neural architectures involved in social information processing that transcends the sensory modalities used from mouse to man.

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Researchers identify gene that influences the ability to remember faces