Top Photo: Dr. Halfmann. Photo credit: Image: stowers.org
Scientists may be one big step closer to finding a treatment for Huntington’s disease, a rare, inherited brain disorder.
According to Dr. Randal Halfmann, a researcher at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, the proteins that cause Huntington’s, and other age-associated diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, have what’s called polyQ.
Cells are made up of a variety of substances doing different jobs. Proteins are the cell’s factory workers, and the building blocks of proteins are amino acids. Some proteins have repetitive sequences of these amino acids. According to the Stowers Institute, Huntington’s, and eight other diseases, occur when one of these repetitive sequences is too long, which starts a chain reaction that kills the cell.
Dr. Halfmann, who is also involved in the recently-published study, compares this chain reaction in the brain to a wildfire.
“It’s kind of like if you were to strike a match in a dry forest, and once the fire gets going, it’s really, really hard to put out,” Halfmann said. “What my lab has tried to do is figure out how the match first strikes. What is the spark that lights the fire? And if we can figure that out, then perhaps we can come up with some sort of treatment against these diseases.”
To find that moment, the team of researchers found a way to perform experiments inside individual cells and followed a trial-and-error approach—only to find that what starts the forest fire is a single molecule of polyQ. The team was then able to find a way to prevent the problem from spreading further.
The next step is to create a drug that can achieve a similar effect in humans, with the goal of finding a treatment for Huntington’s. But the researchers have their eyes on other goals as well.
“Now that we’ve demonstrated that we can figure this out for this one example, the hope is that we’ll be able to do exactly the same thing for the proteins that are responsible for ALS, for Alzheimer’s, for Parkinson’s,” said Halfmann.
Are Orcas Hunting Boats Off the Coast of Spain?
Known as the wolves of the sea, orcas are cunning predators that often hunt in packs. They’re able to learn new ways to subdue their prey, but could orcas off the coast of Spain and Portugal be “hunting” boats?
It doesn’t seem like these whales are trying to get to the sailors on board, but they either enjoy disabling boats or just don’t like them floating around in their waters.
Some biologists think a pregnant female orca named White Gladis might have had a bad run-in with a boat in the summer of 2020. She can be found in the Strait of Gibralter, which connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Mediterranean Sea.
A pod of nine orcas started one of the first attacks by surrounding a 46-foot boat in the strait. The whales communicated with their high-pitched whistling and started spinning the boat by ramming the hull. Their fury disabled the engine and the whales chomped and snapped off the lower part of the boat’s fiberglass rudder. The attack lasted more than an hour and the boat and crew had to be rescued.
Biologists think White Gladis may have taught her young, and more orcas have learned to bust up boats in the area. Females tend to be smaller than males but still pack a wallop, growing to up to 25 feet long and weighing between 8,000–16,000 pounds.
These black-and-white whales have attacked more than 100 boats in the area and sank three of them! The latest attack was on a Dutch racing yacht. The Team JAJO crew immediately took down its sails and slowed the boat to a safe speed. After 15 minutes of ramming the yacht and messing with its rudders, the three orcas left without damaging the boat.
