Thursday, November 11, 2010
Pain Gene May Have Links to Creativity
A newly discovered gene which helps to control the sense of pain is linked to synaesthesia, when sensations such as touch also affect other senses like hearing or sight. The rare condition causes some people to see sounds or written words as colours, or experience tastes, smells and shapes in linked combinations. Famous synaesthetes include composers Franz Liszt or Olivier Messiaens, and this condition has been linked to creativity and intelligence.
Now Austrian medical researchers have identified a gene variation which reduces the sense of pain, giving hope for future treatments of pain sufferers, according to new research published in the journal Cell today (12 November 2010). Around one in five people around the world suffer from acute or chronic pain, with all its financial costs and emotional burden. Studies of twins have shown that at least half of the differences in the way we are sensitive to pain is inherited.
Scientists at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna, led by Josef Penninger and Greg Neely, together with Clifford Woolf of Harvard Medical School, Boston, developed a system in fruit flies to model pain perception. The system allowed them to screen nearly the entire set of the fly’s genes in search for those that affect the insect’s response to noxious heat. After identifying 600 pain genes the researchers closed in on one known as α2δ3 which is involved in calcium ion channels. Doctors already know that these tiny pores in the cell membrane are targeted by some existing analgesics, helping to relieve pain, so it seemed a promising candidate gene for further studies.
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