"Zombie" Genes? Research Shows Some Genes Come to Life in the Brain after Death: Post-mortem Changes
upstart writes in with an IRC submission for AzumaHazuki:
"That glial cells enlarge after death isn't too surprising given that they are inflammatory and their job is to clean things up after brain injuries like oxygen deprivation or stroke," said Dr. Jeffrey Loeb, the John S. Garvin Professor and head of neurology and rehabilitation at the UIC College of Medicine and corresponding author on the paper.
What's significant, Loeb said, is the implications of this discovery -- most research studies that use postmortem human brain tissues to find treatments and potential cures for disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease, do not account for the post-mortem gene expression or cell activity.
[...] They found that about 80% of the genes analyzed remained relatively stable for 24 hours -- their expression didn't change much. These included genes often referred to as housekeeping genes that provide basic cellular functions and are commonly used in research studies to show the quality of the tissue. Another group of genes, known to be present in neurons and shown to be intricately involved in human brain activity such as memory, thinking and seizure activity, rapidly degraded in the hours after death.
[...] A third group of genes -- the 'zombie genes' -- increased their activity at the same time the neuronal genes were ramping down. The pattern of post-mortem changes peaked at about 12 hours.
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