Scientists make startling discoveries in genes of the dead

23 June 2016 - 16:23 By Bruce Gorton

Genes can apparently survive for days after animals die‚ according to new research.Science reports that microbiologist Peter Noble of the University of Washington‚ Seattle‚ and his team were curious about what happens to genes after death.While scientists analysing blood and liver samples from human cadavers have previously noted some postmortem activity from a few genes‚ Noble’s team took it further‚ analysing more than 1‚000 genes‚ and studying how they functioned in deceased mice and zebrafish‚ tracking changes for four days in the fish and two days in the rodents.They expected the genes to just die off‚ instead what they found was a lot of them ramped up in activity. Some of them were those that function during an emergency – others were a bit more surprising.“What’s jaw-dropping is that developmental genes are turned on after death‚” Noble says. Cancer genes also become more active – which may explain why transplants from the recently deceased have a higher risk of cancer...

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