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POPS'Supermice' who can resist cancer and age almost half as fast as normal In the latest study, published in the journal Cell, the scientists solved that problem by changing the genes of the mice first to make them resistant to the disease. The researchers found that mice which had been created in this way had better muscle in old age, healthier skin tissue and fewer digestion problems. "By simultaneously increasing the amounts of telomerase and the resistance to cancer we are able to delay ageing in mice and also to extend their life span by 40 per cent," said Maria A. Blasco, from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), who carried out the study with colleagues from Valencia University. "These mice get to live for as long as the eldest mice in records of the same kind. "If we were to parallel it to humans, then it would mean reaching 120 years of age and also to start ageing much later in life."
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POPSAnatomy of a false memory A new study now reconciles these conflicting data, by showing that the different regions of the brain previously implicated are involved in different kinds of memory errors. It also pinpoints a specific region as being involved in false memories, and could help researchers better understand how the brain controls memory.
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POPSThe Promise and Power of RNA RNA interference, or RNAi, discovered only about 10 years ago, is attracting huge interest for its seeming ability to knock out disease-causing genes. There are already at least six RNAi drugs being tested in people, for illnesses including cancer and an eye disease. And while there are still huge challenges to surmount, that number could easily double in the coming year. “I’ve never found a gene that couldn’t be down-regulated by RNAi,” said Tod Woolf, president of RXi Pharmaceuticals, one of the many companies that have sprung up in the last few years to pursue RNA-based medicines. The two scientists credited with discovering the basic mechanism of RNA interference won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006, only eight years after publishing their seminal paper. And three scientists credited with discovering the closely related micro-RNA in the 1990s won Lasker Awards for medical research this year.
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