The Discover: Sciencefor the Curious journal asks the question of, “Could human evolutionary changes be behind mental disorders?" For a long period of time, scientists have supposed
that the human family tree still obtains many similarities. One connection they
made is about that seventy percent of human adults have impacted wisdom teeth
and the evolutionary decrease of the size of the jaw in the human lineage and
modern changes in diet. To further investigate, the geneticist, David Kingsley
at Stanford University and his collogues experimented on the gene for a protein
called CACNA1C. This gene helps to send the flow of calcium in and out of
cells. In order to investigate, the researchers used the non-coding components
of the gene. They later compared the typical human genome with the diverse
range of human genomes form the 1000 genomes project, they noticed a large
amount of variation in only one specific region of the gene. They now suggest
that the variation in this region could possibly be either decreasing or
increasing the actions of the CACNA1C. This might cause the risk for mental disorders.
Kingsley believes that this may help to better match a patient’s DNA risk factors
with the drugs that are more likely to be beneficial in the future.
Im curious as to what the study showed as to the need for calcium in the cells. Was a lower concentration or higher needed to prevent this from happening?
ReplyDeleteI think its interesting how they related a link between people with mental disease with the area/environment they live in. Like when it said schizophrenia prevalence and regions of Europe where there is lower winter temperature.
ReplyDelete