Creating “theories of all”, unified models that explain various phenomena associated with a scientific field, is not exclusive heritage of physicists. The fight against some diseases can also benefit from models that help us understand their causes and consequences and the processes that mediate.
New model. Now a group of researchers has devised a new modela theory that tries to explain Alzheimer’s disease through a “unified explanation of molecular chaos” that derives in this neurodegenerative disorder. According to this new theory, the disease and its symptoms would derive from a collapse of the transport system in charge of moving molecules between the nucleus and cell cytoplasm.
This new theory can help simplify a topic as complex as Alzheimer’s. However, its authors remember that this disruption is still extremely complex, with more than a thousand genes involved in it.
“Our proposal, focused on the rupture of communication between the nucleus and the cytoplasm leading to massive disruptions in gene expression, offers a plausible framework to understand the mechanisms that lead to this complex disease,” Explain in a press release Paul Coleman, co -author of the new model.
A granular problem The model places the formation of chronic stress granules at the beginning of this process. These are clusters of proteins and RNA chains responsible for generating stress in the cell.
Stress granules are usually generated temporarily. Its original function is to respond to cell stress by leaving some processes until the cell can recover. Once its duty has fulfilled and the stress disappeared, they dissolve.
The problem unleashes when these granules become chronic, which leads them to catch other molecules, making it difficult for them to move between the nucleus and the rest of the cell.
From inside out. The model starts from this trigger to explain with it the disease and its consequences outside the cellular unit. And it is that the changes that occur at the cellular level end up affecting cerebral synapses, metabolism, protein processing and cell survival, as explained by the model responsible for the model.
The details of the new model were published In an article In the magazine Alzheimer’s and Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association.
A disease with many faces. Alzheimer is one of the most intriguing diseases, Explain the responsible team of the new model. In part, they point out, this is because it takes the appearance of various diseases made one, with symptoms that include memory loss and cognitive deterioration, but also changes in personality and in our same internal biology.
This complexity, continues to expose the team, is partly responsible for how extremely difficult it is to study this disease. Models like this that schematize their processes, can serve future researchers to find new routes of action that become more effective therapies when facing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s or, even, the same disease.
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