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more about #mutation beercheck: Great. I can hear the pedos now: "I thought she was 18, Your Honor". more » tetracycloide: studies later revealed the mutation to be a result of exposure to the srike during her trip to hyperion. more » Kato3D: Have religious fanatics threated to burn her at the stake yet? more » ParryLost: She is still able to learn on some basic level if she recognizes people. Presumably if one's brain stopped ageing at a more mature point, like 21 or s... more » Garrison Dean: R.O.A.C.H.: The sad thing is that people with this developmental handicap almost always turn to a life of crime. And another example more » borntohula: i'm pretty sure our brains reach full development around 21, so i highly doubt that if the aging process were reversed from 60-21, that there would be... more » YankBoffin: Hmmm...stop your body from aging and continue to live on at the physical and sexingest peak of your life or live on and gain wisdom as your body and l... more » 92BuickLeSabre: attends school I'm sorry...what? I think I must have misheard you. more » LittleDragon: Cool until you think about it. Then its really cool. I would give almost any thing to be 8 again. Summers seemed to last forever, every thing was funn... more » crashedpc - Haifisch: Great, now some people really will experience an Endless Summer as their 20 year old fratboy mind stays that way for 50 years. more » Perhaps Not: Holy god. This is like "Jefty is Five." Anybody else read that story? more » El_Fez: Wow - that really sucks to be her. more » -
#medicalmystery
Infant-Sized Teenager May Provide Key to Reversing the Aging Process
Brooke Greenberg looks like a toddler, but she is actually sixteen years old. She is only 30 inches high. Now scientists are studying her genome to figure out whether she possesses a mutation that prevents her body from aging. More » -
#sensationalizedscience
All the Ways We Can Mess Up Your Brain
Yesterday we told you all about a recent study where a group of researchers identified the genes responsible for brain development in the womb. We pointed out, in our usual excitable way, that this discovery is the first step on the road to tinkering with those genes to produce mega-geniuses and mindless drones. The researchers made their discovery using a cool, high-speed method of identifying active genes called RNA interference (RNAi), which selectively suppresses gene activity. Here you can see the results of the RNAi process, which left a whole bunch of brain neurons in pretty bad shape . Above, the only untreated neuron is (A) — all the rest are RNAi mutants, whose weird shapes reveal what the suppressed genes do. Check out more mutated brains below. More » -
#mutation
A Genetic Mutation That Causes Humans to Walk on All Fours
In 2005, scientists discovered a few families in Hungary where some of the adults only walked on all fours. Few understood the causes of this rare condition, called Unertan syndrome. Some scientists speculated that the quadrupedal people had simply never learned to walk upright due to learning disabilities and lack of access to proper medical care. Others believed that these families had a mutation in a set of genes that cause humans to walk upright. Today at a conference, researchers in Turkey are presenting the results of a study where they analyzed the genomes in all four families. They are beginning to figure out what causes present-day humans to walk on all fours the way our distant ancestors did. More »
