WIKIMEDIA, DR. STEVEN FINKBEINER
Scientists recently reported new insights into a possible molecular mechanism of Huntington’s disease and offered a potential route to correcting it. Experiments on mouse models of the neurodegenerative disease pointed to a dysfunction in the biosynthesis of the amino acid cysteine, and showed that supplementing their diets with cysteine seemed to reverse signs of the disease, according to a team led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Their work was published in Nature last week (March 26).
“This is a very plausible theory (it seems to me), and the paper makes a very strong case for it,” Derek Lowe wrote at his blog, In The Pipeline.
Huntington’s researchers have long known the genetic culprit of the disease—a string of glutamines at ...
