Noma DePew wrote:
>
> Ray, I THINK I understood the gist of this, but could someone translate it in
> to layman's language please?
> Bunny
>
.......................................................................
Sorry Bunny:
I have been trying to editorialize more with explanations.
I was wondering if anyone was really paying attention.
The PMID report is a recent abstract from an NIH database called Pub Med,
which publishes abstracts of all new articles in scientific publications.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/
Since fewer women are affected by Parkinson's Disease than men,
there has been an interest in "why? .
So, this report sorts out some of the biochemistry of
antiapoptotic effects of estrogens in nigral dopaminergic neurons.
In laymen's terms--
antiapoptotic...is good,
because apoptosis is "programmed cell death"
that is supposedly triggered in PD which causes "progression".
Estrogen or its precursors may help.
Caspase is the biochemical that is a "marker" for doomed cells.
Programmed cell death has its good side in growth and development
and in controlling cancer cells. Damaged or unwanted cells are removed
in an orderly fashion by our bodies. The process is not yet understood clearly.
> The estrogen receptor (ER) subtype in the mesencephalon is exclusively
> ER beta, a recently cloned novel subtype. Bound with estradiol, it enhances gene
> transcription through the estrogen response element (ERE) or inhibits it through
> the activator protein-1 (AP-1) site. We demonstrated that 17beta-estradiol
> provided protection against nigral neuronal apoptosis caused by exposure to
> either bleomycin sulfate (BLM) or buthionine sulfoximine (BSO). BLM and
> BSO-induced nigral apoptosis was blocked by inhibitors for caspase-3 or
> c-Jun/AP-1.
It is o.k. if your eyes to glaze over and you take a brief nap during this part...
it is a reference to genes which are control mechanisms for estrogen and
apoptosis.
As a specialty technology, genetics is a world of its own, but, now
starting to impact everything else in very specific ways. The human genome
has been
deciphered (though not yet understood), and we better get used to it.
Genes are usually referred to in cryptic terms, because, that is the way it is.
But, if you hang around enough, it starts making sense.
A new scientific field is Proteonomics, which is about defining the proteins
produced by newly discovered genes. It will require incredible computing
power for the purposes of modeling protein structures.
Whenever I see references to the function of specific genes,
I am impressed and encouraged.
DNA is so fundamental in its control of life.
Ray
.............................................................................
Ray Strand
Prairie Sky Design
-----------------( on the Edge of the Prairie Abyss )---------------
when the sky is clear
the ground is visible
49/dx 47/40? onset
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