ASSUMPTIONS about how the chromosomal abnormalities associated with Down’s
syndrome affect the body have been turned on their head.
It was thought that in different tissues, changes in the expression of
different genes were responsible for the various problems associated with
Down’s. Now a team from Switzerland has found that gene expression in every cell
may be affected. Stylianos Antonarakis of the University of Geneva Medical
School found that levels of expression of 330 of the 25,000 proteins produced in
mice brains were different in mice with Down’s. Crucially, at least 16 of these
were proteins linked to ribosomes—the…
