Originally published September 14 2005
Scientists find that 15 percent of a body's genes defend against microbial attacks
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Because genes not only work individually, but in clusters and modules, researchers at the University of Florida College of Medicine are finding many genetic factors that deal with the body's defense against infection.
The body's overwhelming genetic defense, which has implications for the survival of patients who are severely burned or injured, was revealed in a sweeping analysis of gene activity in volunteers who were injected with a bacterial product that temporarily created flu-like symptoms.
"It was a dramatic reprioritization of genes.
Inflammation is part of normal healing when people are severely burned or injured, but in some patients, it can be fatal, causing bloodstream infections and multiple organ failure.
UF Genetics Institute researchers are part of a national group of scientists united by a five-year, $37 million "glue grant" from the NIGMS.
Glue grants bring together scientists from diverse fields -- in this case surgery, critical care medicine, genomics, bioinformatics, immunology and computational biology -- to solve problems in biomedical science that no single laboratory could address.
The condition is similar to sepsis, which can happen when the body's infection-fighting white blood cells spring into action, causing potentially harmful inflammation in the process.
"Basically we made the volunteers appear septic for a couple of hours and examined changes in the gene expression from their white blood cells," Moldawer said.
"Such genomic analyses give us the ability to simultaneously survey the activity of every gene in the cell, giving us vast lists of genes that change in response to stimulation.
"The apparent repression of genes that occurs has never been fully appreciated," said Henry Baker, Ph.D., associate director of the UF Genetics Institute and director of the UF lab that performs genomic analyses for the consortium.
The glue grant team includes scientists from the UF College of Medicine; Stanford; Washington University; the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Brunswick, N.J.; Ingenuity Systems Inc.; the University of Rochester School of Medicine in Rochester, N.Y.; and Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston.
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