Java Genes

Have you ever wondered how some people could make it through a whole day running on one cup of coffee while others could drink a gallon and still need a nap?  Well I have since I'm one of those people who probably consume a typically dangerous amount of caffeine on a daily basis, and it turns out that it is actually linked to your genes.  Researchers have found several variations of a gene that controls caffeine metabolism.  Some people carry a variation where they metabolize caffeine more slowly than others who have a different variant.  The slower your body metabolizes it, the less the person feels the need to drink it, while the faster a person's metabolism is, the more caffeine they can tolerate at a time.  This is why some people feel jittery or anxious after one cup as opposed to others who just feel more happy and energized.  In addition to a link to caffeine metabolism, scientists also noted that those same genes also coded for how the body metabolizes other drugs in the body, like nicotine.  This finding in the study could be very important to the future of medicine if they can link these genes controlling metabolism of other drugs as well, which could hopefully lead to new, more precise treatments of numerous diseases.

E-Cigarettes in youth

In current times, electronic cigarettes (E-Cigarette) are very popular because it's smoking without smoking a cigarette. These E-Cigarettes turn nicotine into vapor which can be inhaled. It is proven to cause harm to brains of those who use them and just the air of the people around the users.
The study was performed on those who are off adolescent age, and not on adults. "Some researchers have said that e-cigarette use amount youth could act as a gateway to traditional smoking but the report says the relationship is not fully established."


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/health/e-cigarettes-united-states.html

Genetic Link to Addiction

Researches have noticed that people who clear nicotine slower are twice as likely to become addicted. The study focused on genetic defects that have a moderate or sever affects on the liver's ability to metabolize nicotine. 281 seventh graders that have begun to smoke, but not are not necessarily addicted were studied and thirteen percent had versions of the defected gene. Also having the nicotine remain in the brain longer also sped up the addiction.

It would be interesting to see how well this study develops. It could help save lives of many Americans from having to rely on such an addictive drug that is so readily available and is harming so many. Having a better understanding of how toxins affect us and how are body react to them can all be discovered through genetics.

Nicotine response genetics in the zebrafish

 



Tobacco use is predicted to result in over 1 billion deaths worldwide by the end of the 21^st century. How genetic variation contributes to the observed differential predisposition in the human population to drug dependence is unknown.Tobacco is a carrier for the highly addictive drug nicotine. Once your body gets a taste for nicotine, it can quickly become a life-long addiction, with extremely fatal consequences. Nicotine is the main drug in all forms of tobacco. Nicotine acts as both a stimulant and a sedative. It is one of the most heavily used addictive drugs in the U.S. The zebrafish is an emerging vertebrate model system for understanding the genetics of behavior. They developed a nicotine behavioral assay in zebrafish and applied it in a forward genetic screen using gene-breaking transposon mutagenesis. We show this insertional method generates mutant alleles that are reversible through Cre-mediated recombination, representing a conditional mutation system for the zebrafish. The combination of this reporter-tagged insertional mutagen approach and zebrafish provides a powerful platform for a rich array of questions amenable to genetic-based scientific inquiry, including the basis of behavior, epigenetics, plasticity, stress, memory, and learning. Looking at the figures below, the zebra fish were quite changed by the nicotine. 

Genes linked with ability to quit smoking

According to Medical News Today, there is a connection between a person's ability to quit smoking on their own or having to use medication to stop smoking. the discovery is being used to make unique treatments for the needs of each individual who is trying to quit.  Researchers have found that some individuals have a weakness to nicotine dependence. they used 3 nicotinic receptor genes, CHRNA5-CHRNA3-CHRNB4, that have already been proven to have a connection with nicotine addiction.

The researchers used the information from another study and found that people who have the high-risk genes that try to stop smoking that 2 more years to completely quit than individuals who have low-risk genes. individuals who have the high-risk genes had a heavier nicotine consumption than those who didn't. this made it harder for them to quit. Li-Shiun Chen, M.D., of the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis stated: "We found that the effects of smoking cessation medications depend on a person's genes. If smokers have the risk genes, they don't quit easily on their own and will benefit greatly from the medications. If smokers don't have the risk genes, they are likely to quit successfully without the help of medications such as nicotine replacement or bupropion."

This study proved that not all individuals with nicotine addictions can be treated the same way. Statistics show that there are about 440,000 deaths in the United States related to smoking or being exposed to second hand smoke. it is also known that 8.6 million Americans have a smoking-related disease and more than 46 million adults that smoke in the United States. i thought this study was very important because it shows the effects of smoking and how bad this addiction really is. i think that that smoking does more damage than a lot of people think it does. it is great that people are being informed about how hard quitting is. this study will help many individuals quit because now they will have individual approaches for them.

Twin Smokers Study Suggests Greater Genetic Influence

A study by the University of Colarado Boulder of the smoking patterns of over 596 twins, 363 of them identical and 233 of them fraternal, suggests that today's smokers may have a greater genetic influence than those in the past. The study involved a questionnaire focusing on smoking habits from 1960-1980, a period of changing views on smoking. One of the study's co-authors, Professor Fred Pampel, stated that, ""In the past, when smoking rates were higher, people smoked for a variety of reasons. Today the composition of the smoking population has changed. Smokers are more likely to be hard-core users who are most strongly influenced by genetic factors." Between identical twins, 65% of both twins quit within a two year time period if the other twin quit. Between fraternal twins, this dropped to 55%, suggesting a genetic component. So, fraternal twins sharing the same twins showed greater similiarities in their smoking habits and level of addiction. Also, if one twin continued to smoke it was more likely that the other twin would not quit smoking. Although the researchers concede that a specific genetic marker is hard to identify, they say that the study shows many genetically similiarities. Smoking-related diseases lead to approximately 443,000 deaths a year in the United States. Anti-smoking campaigns had previously drastically cut the smoking population, the number has flatlined over the past years, suggesting a genetic influence. The study suggests that this could change anti-smoking campaigns to treating it as more of an addiction than a choice, due to the growing genetic component of smoking. Maybe now nioctine addiction will be viewed similiarly to alocholism or drug addiction and taken more seriously by the public.