Reed Hutchinson/UCLA
Life scientists Xia Yang and Fernando Gomez-Pinilla say their research holds the promise of individualized treatments for such diseases as Alzheimer’s.
UCLA biologists have discovered how head injuries adversely affect individual cells and genes that can lead to serious brain disorders. The life scientists provide the first cell "atlas" of the hippocampus — the part of the brain that helps regulate learning and memory — when it is affected by traumatic brain injury. The team also proposes gene candidates for treating brain diseases associated with traumatic brain injury, such as Alzheimer's disease and post-traumatic stress disorder. The researchers studied more than 6,000 cells in 15 hippocampal cell types — the first study of individual cell types subject to brain trauma. Each cell has the same DNA, but which genes are activated varies among different cell types. Among the 15 cell types are two that were previously unknown, each with a unique set of active genes. "Every cell type is different," said Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, a UCLA professor of neurosurgery and of integrative biology and physiology, and co-senior author of the study , which was published Communications.
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