Thursday, April 15, 2021

'Zombie Genes' Spur Some Brain Cells to Grow Even After Death

 

This newfound awareness of the activity of "zombie genes" has the potential to cause an affect on research  regarding diseases that affect the brain. For this study, researchers used fresh brain tissue taken from surgery. With this they found that some cells continued gene expression even after death. Dr. Jeffrey Loeb says, "Most studies assume that everything in the brain stops when the heart stops beating, but this is not so. Loeb and his team observed that these patterns of gene expression in that of fresh brain tissue did not match the published findings in tissue that was analyzed after death. 

I found this article to be very fascinating, because like Dr. Jeffrey Loeb said, I too believed that everything in the brain stopped when the heart stopped beating, however that was clearly proven incorrect. With further research on this topic, who knows what medical advances can comes from the continued activity of the brain after death.

1 comment:

  1. How wild would it be if we were able to preserve brains post mortem, for like preserving consciousness till cloning humans is easier. Sounds like a science fiction plot.

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