Many currently incurable diseases of the nervous system are likely to have their origin in problems which happen during the growth of the brain --but pinpointing where the defects occur is like finding a needle in a haystack, says a University of Edinburgh scientist. However, in his inaugural lecture today (Tuesday, 19 April), Professor David Price will explain that research during the past twenty years has given hope for better understanding of the origins of diseases like epilepsy, motor neurone disease and schizophrenia.
He says: "The human brain is staggeringly complex: 15 billion cells with about a thousand billion connections between them. Understanding how the development of such a complex structure is controlled might seem an impossible task, but research in the past twenty years has made us more optimistic.
"In the mid-1980s, research that built on the earlier discovery, in the 1950s, of the structure of DNA and the genetic code, revolutionised our understanding of how simple organisms, such as insects, develop. And then a truly remarkable discovery was made-- that the genes and genetic mechanisms which control development of even very simple organisms are retained in humans. This gives us hope that research on organisms with rudimentary brains will help us learn a lot about how our own brains develop."
David Price is Professor in Developmental Neurobiology and his research group at the University of Edinburgh is one of only two dozen in the world working to understand how genes control the growth of the brain.
Building Brains by Professor David Price, College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine, University of Edinburgh: Tuesday, 19 April, 2005 in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre, Medical School, Teviot Place, Edinburgh, United Kingdom at 5.15pm. The lecture is open to the public.
Contact: Linda Menzies
Linda.Menzies@ed.ac.uk
44-131-650-6382
University of Edinburgh
http://www.ed.ac.uk
据MedicalNewsToday网4月20日消息，英国爱丁堡大学的一位科学家称，目前许多无法治愈的神经系统疾病都可能与病人大脑生长过程中产生的问题有关,但要想确定具体问题就像大海捞针一般困难。然而，在这位科学家——戴维·普莱斯教授4月19日的就职讲座上解释说，过去二十年中这方面研究使科学家们对某些疾病的病因已经有了更深一步的了解，例如癫痫症、运动神经元疾病、以及精神分裂症等等。
他说：“人类大脑的结构极为复杂：拥有大约150亿个细胞，相互间有一万亿个神经节。如果想了解如此复杂的脑部结构是怎样发育的几乎是一件不可能的事情，但是20年来我们所取得的研究成果让我们看到了一线曙光。”
“上个世纪八十年代中期，科学家们基于五十年代的发现针对DNA结构以及基因代码所做的研究引发了一场彻底性的革命，并且颠覆了我们对例如昆虫这样的简单有机生物的认识。随后科学家们又发现了人体中居然存在控制最简单的有机物生长的基因与遗传机制。根据这一发现，我们认为如果对有机生物未生长的大脑进行研究将会有助于了解大脑的生长过程。”
戴维·普莱斯是发育神经生物学教授，他在爱丁堡大学的研究小组是世界上仅有的24个致力于研究基因如何影响大脑发育课题的研究组织之一。
