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Gene therapy to reduce deleterious effects of stress on memory

Paraphrasing the abstract: Glucocorticoids, the adrenal steroid hormones secreted during stress, can impair memory. Estrogen can enhance spatial memory and can block at least some of the bad effects of glucocorticoids on memory. Andrea Nicholas, Carolina D. Munhoz, Deveroux Ferguson, Laura Campbell and Robert Sapolsky constructed a chimeric gene (”ER/GR”) containing the hormone-binding domain of the glucocorticoid receptor and the DNA binding domain of the estrogen receptor. As a result, ER/GR transduces deleterious glucocorticoid signals into beneficial estrogen signals.

They tested this gene on male mice with a water maze. They found that it enhances spatial memory and blocks the impairing effects of stress.

References:

Andrea Nicholas, Carolina D. Munhoz, Deveroux Ferguson, Laura Campbell and Robert Sapolsky. Enhancing Cognition after Stress with Gene Therapy. J. Neurosci. 26: 11637-11643.

pop sci article

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 6:53 pm by Bayle Shanks and is filed under At the scale of systems and functions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Gene therapy to reduce deleterious effects of stress on memory”

  1. saket mani Says:
    December 6th, 2006 at 1:11 am

    Dear author

    Nice to see your work in Gene therapy to reduce deleterious effects of stress on memory
    here, did you studied the effects in cognitive impairement? what are the different factors you have into cosideration in this study?

    Thanks

  2. Bayle Says:
    December 7th, 2006 at 6:24 pm

    Saket,

    I posted this weblog entry on this website but I am not an author of the original paper. I don’t know if any of the authors read this weblog.

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