Does anyone read Scientific American MIND?

[macunderdog]

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Anyone?

There is an interesting article in this month's publication that talks about methyl groups that attach to histones in the hippocampus that supress a gene that generates a protein that helps the brain adapt to stress. It also mentioned that studies showed that the hippocampuses of patients with some cases of human depression appeared to be shrunken.

I am wondering if supressing a certain gene can somehow affect the size of the cells that they inhabit. In this case it is the hippocampus that decreases in size.

??

 

[MDstudent101]

Anyone?

There is an interesting article in this month's publication that talks about methyl groups that attach to histones in the hippocampus that supress a gene that generates a protein that helps the brain adapt to stress. It also mentioned that studies showed that the hippocampuses of patients with some cases of human depression appeared to be shrunken.

I am wondering if supressing a certain gene can somehow affect the size of the cells that they inhabit. In this case it is the hippocampus that decreases in size.

??

I dn't know about this haven't read it but it's fishy to me, because methyl in vast amounts is toxic and if they attach to the histones maybe there could be some type of mutation or biological error in the very hippocampus that may result in suppressing that certain gene in fact relatively injuction with depression, but at the same time could cause Alzhiemer's disease or some other memory or emotional cell detirioration at cost of inevitability....... Just my 2 cent'z 😀

Comment back this is interesting would like to keep discussing this matter...! 🙂

 

[MDstudent101]

By toxic i mean could seriously affect our Metabolism...

 

[macunderdog]

When you say biological error, don't you mean (in a sense) that anything that is not essentially "right" philosophically is an error. So methyl groups have a negative effect on the histones that generate that certain protein. Which means that the excess of methyl groups would certainly have an even more negative effect on these histones which, like you said, might lead to other problems, such as Alzhiemers.

What do you think about the the shrinking of the hippocampus? How can the excess of methyl groups affect the size of a group of cells?

 

[flaquita69us]

What do you mean that methyl is toxic? Methylation of histones is a pretty common regulatory method for gene suppression. Do you mean free methyl groups in solution, and if so, how would we end up with vast amounts of those in our system. I was also under the impression (could definitely be wrong here) that decreased size of tissue generally results from death of cells, not necessarily a change in size of the cells themselves. This might also make sense because the article says that the methylation is suppressing the expression of a gene that encodes a protein that helps the brain adapt to stress. Cell death would likely result from increased stress. Just my thoughts. Feel free to disagree, I would love to discuss this further.

 

[Writer1985]

Methylation is a pretty basic technique for turning genes on or off in a cell. Perhaps here the genes affecting the cell cycle in the hippocampus get turned off; cells stop dividing (or divide more slowly) and thus the hippocampus appears smaller.

 

[macunderdog]

If methylation is a way of turning on and off gene's in a cell, then what is the role of acetylation? Take for example the anti-depressants that counteract the "overmethylation" of the genes by generating more acetyl groups to kinda neutralize the the methyl groups, like a base would do to an acid.

And if cell death can be caused by increased stress, what is the chemical process of stress causing cell death? And chemically, what is stress? Cell death in the hippocampus, the memory-storing part of the brain, would have to have some other serious affects on memory. Would depression correlate with memory loss as well?

 

[MDstudent101]

When you say biological error, don't you mean (in a sense) that anything that is not essentially "right" philosophically is an error. So methyl groups have a negative effect on the histones that generate that certain protein. Which means that the excess of methyl groups would certainly have an even more negative effect on these histones which, like you said, might lead to other problems, such as Alzhiemers.

Yes that's correct....

What do you think about the the shrinking of the hippocampus? How can the excess of methyl groups affect the size of a group of cells?

The excess of methyl can cause methylation, which methylation has different aspects to it, like methylation and cancer. We are not talking about cancer in the hippocampus area, but methylation and cancer cause the cells in a tumor to expand.. in other words grow. So I belive that if methyl can lead to methylation of cancer and methylation of cancer can expand cells, then I also belive that their could be some other aspect of methylation which has not been uncovered or something that can cause cells to shrink. So if methylation would indeed reach the hippocampus area then it could shrink those cells perhaps as well as expand them.

Keep in mind that this is just a theory..... 😀

 

[macunderdog]

Great theory!! My question to that would be in what cases would methylation either cause shrinkage or growth??

 

[MDstudent101]

What do you mean that methyl is toxic? Methylation of histones is a pretty common regulatory method for gene suppression. Do you mean free methyl groups in solution, and if so, how would we end up with vast amounts of those in our system. I was also under the impression (could definitely be wrong here) that decreased size of tissue generally results from death of cells, not necessarily a change in size of the cells themselves. This might also make sense because the article says that the methylation is suppressing the expression of a gene that encodes a protein that helps the brain adapt to stress. Cell death would likely result from increased stress. Just my thoughts. Feel free to disagree, I would love to discuss this further.

Your right there are vast amounts of methyl in our systems but I wasn't infering that methyl was deadly in any way, sorry if I mis-wrote it (think I did) but that methyl can cuase change in an organism's metabolism which can be dangerous if the organism;s metabolism becomes fluctuant because of the Methyl..... But I agree with you... No need to disagree 😀

 

[MDstudent101]

Great theory!! My question to that would be in what cases would methylation either cause shrinkage or growth??

As -flaquita69us- said cells could start to deteriorate slowly because high levels of stress in your body.. Leading to Shrinkage....

As for growth:
Cells that lack the capacity to produce proteins have given rise to a tumor in such cases, which cells then expand clonally..

 

[macunderdog]

As for stress...what is stress chemically?

 

[MDstudent101]

As for stress...what is stress chemically?

Yes,
let me put it this way when you get angry, happy, sad, or even when you feel a rush of adrenaline (i know it's not an emotion but can be related to stress) there can ultimately be a chemical and most of the time there is a chemical reaction acuring in your'e body. moslty in the neurological area of the body,

There have been cases in which a person has a chemical inbalance in their brain and this has caused them to kill their family... Because he went into a matter of rage, but in reality the motive behind that rage was triggered by the CHEMICAL inbalance residing in the brain..

Hope this helps.. 😀

 

[Raamy]

flaquita69us is correct in that methylation is a common way of suprressing gene expression by the body's own cell. Methylation is permanent, such that once a histone is methylated, it is virtually impossible to reactivate that gene. This is effective during the developmental stages of an organism so that certain genes can be turned off after they are no longer needed in growth. Methylation is not toxic in this context, and is not an abnormality, it is a natural process of every cell in the body. To the person who asked what does acetylation do...it does the exact opposite of methylation. Along with phosphorylation, acetylation activates genes. Unlike methylation, these two activators are reversable. As far as hippocampal atrophy from depression, studies have been done on this sort of thing a while back that concluded that some of the sources are: 1. retraction of dendritic proccesses (neural plasticity responses to stress conditions) 2. inhibition of neurogenesis 3. and neurotoxicity (apoptosis from stress inducing pathways such as those that lead to caspase activation...similar to what happens in neurons in patients with alzheimers). Also, activation of caspase pathway genes could also be supplemented by inhibition of NF-kB which regulates cellular responses to stress. To the OP, did they mention in the article which gene is methylated? So, what in effect is possibly happening is the stress levels are not only leading to suppression of protective pathway genes, but the constitutively active neural stress pathways are leading to neurotoxicity (possibly Ca++?) which leads to apoptosis which leads to shrunken hippocampal volume. Also, results have indicated that hypersecretion of cortisol stress hormone has devastating effects on the hippocampus in depressed individuals which directly leads to atrophy. Interesting thing is, I remember reading an article a long time ago that studied the hippocampuses (hippocampi??) of taxi drivers in England. Apparently their hippocampi are larger than normal since they are required to memorize some of the most complicated and convoluted streets and directions in the world. So it seems that hyperutilization of recall and recognition pathways that involve the hippocampus can have the opposite effect of depression. Also, researchers have found that meditation increases the size of different regions of the brain. So anyway, point is...exercise your brain. Neuro rocks. The end.

 

[macunderdog]

So I guess Taxi drivers are pretty happy people!!