Effects Of Autism Reversible?
Thursday, April 22, 2010 - 17:24
in Biology & Nature
Researchers studying the differential expression of microRNA say they may have discovered a way to treat autism by reversing the effects of the disease. Taken Together with recently published research regarding “DNA tagging” by methylation, they say their new study in Genome medicine illustrates two different “epigenetic” mechanisms controlling gene activity in autism that lie beyond genetic mutations. While methylation inhibits gene expression at the level of DNA, microRNA inhibits at the level of RNA. MicroRNA are snippets of RNA, each of which can inhibit the expression of hundreds to more than a thousand genes. The effects of microRNA are also reversible by treatment with complementary “anti-sense” RNA. read more