X-Message-Number: 15136 Date: Tue, 19 Dec 2000 21:12:00 +0100 From: Subject: Gene research scientists close to human hibernation breakthrough ----- Forwarded message from glen mccready <> ----- Forwarded-by: Nev Dull <> Forwarded-by: Craig Good <> Forwarded by: Andy Thomas <> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/UK/Science/2000-12/gene031200.shtml Gene research scientists close to human hibernation breakthrough By Jonathan Thompson 3 December 2000 If you find winter too much of a struggle, hang on a while. Human hibernation is on the way. The concept of people being able to drop out of the year's gloomiest season is no longer the stuff of science-fiction fantasy. In America, the US Army is funding research into the subject, and scientists from Minnesota to Moscow are looking at its practicality. On Friday, a professor at the University of Marburg, Germany, specialising in animal physiology, reported a key breakthrough. "There is no real reason to say that humans are so different from other mammals that they are unable to enter hibernation," Gerhard Heldmaier said last night. Professor Heldmaier is chairman of the International Hibernation Society and his discovery was of two genes which are believed to trigger hibernation. The finding of the genes, which are involved in controlling, or "switching" enzymes to equip the body for hibernation by allowing it to burn fat rather than carbohydrates, is the latest in a series of discoveries about human hibernation. "For many years we have been fiddling around, trying to find a handle or a switch to turn on this metabolism," he said. "Now, for the first time, we have genes involved in this control. " The first big breakthrough in human hibernation came just under 12 months ago. Matthew T Andrews, a biochemist at the University of Minnesota, began identifying the first of these "switching" genes, named PL and PDK-4. Last night, speaking from his laboratory in Minnesota, Professsor Andrews, said: "In the hibernation genes we have discovered, there are similar genetic sequences with those of humans. It is decades away, but ... short-term stasis would be potentially possible after a lot more investigation on the molecular-biological level." Although the research suggests the possibility of our going under the duvet in November and not emerging until spring, the most likely application of the work would be space travel and medicine. The two professors' discoveries have already led to huge interest worldwide. The US Army, which has funded Professor Andrews' research, is reportedly keen to investigate the potential of hibernation as a means of moving wounded soldiers in a safe "stasis state" from battlefield to surgery. Nasa, interested in human hibernation for long-distance space travel, has sponsoredresearch on the subject at leading US universities. Space travel hibernation, said Professor Andrews, is still "pure science fiction". But he added: "More realistically, one of the first main benefits of this process could be organ preservation. If you could put organs into long-term stasis, as does a hibernator, you could preserve them for months. At the moment, body organs will only keep for about three or four days. Hibernation could eventually save lives." At the International Hibernation Society's eleventh symposium in August, held in the Austrian village of Jungholz, Kathrine Dausmann, one of Professor Heldmaier's protgs, presented evidence of the first-known hibernating primate, a Madagascan lemur. "The fact that primates, our closest relatives, can hibernate, again revived the speculation about the possibility of this process in humans," said Professor Heldmaier. "This has the potential to be very useful for human medicine. There are strange things you can achieve by the state of your mind. We just have to discover more about the switch which allows us to turn this hibernation on or off." ----- End forwarded message ----- Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=15136