Human brain; physiological alterations occurring underlying process of aging

Aging is an irreversible and universal phenomenon of every living organism's life. Many recent studies provide evidences that is strictly related to decline in cognitive function impairment but along with various causes behind these abnormal changes, change in brain !unction and structure is one of the most important factors are being widely used to study the hypothesis that the deficits in and temporal order memory are closely related. Increase in age causes reduction in memory processing tasks, which involve information storage and processing. In other explanation it is mentioned that frontal activity, differences underlying aging is associated with recruitment of brain areas and neural circuit efficiency reduction. In case of young subjects increase in activity mean shorter reaction time but in older subjects results are opposite

Breast cancer patients; identification of mutation[s] in BRCA1 gene

Genetic factors contribute to the high rates with breast cancer patients. Our objective was to screen the mutations in the BRCA 1 gene in exon 20. A diagnostic study. The study was carried out in molecular biology lab, Department of Zoology, GC University Lahore and Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology [IMBB], University of Lahore over a period of one year from July 2011 to Aug 2012. To screen for mutation in the BRCA1 gene, blood samples were collected from 22 different patients suffering from breast cancer from the Anmol Hospital and Sir Ganga Ram Hospital Lahore. The collected samples were processed to screen any mutation in exon 20 which is indicative of the fact that exon 20 is not a hotspot for mutations. In our study of 22 females, we have found no mutation in the gene. It is becoming increasingly clear that breast cancer is a multifaceted and heterogeneous disease and histopathological characteristics of breast cancer are controlled by subsets of genetic alterations, providing convincing hints of genotypic-phenotypic correlations between morphological patterns and molecular changes. BRCA has emerged as the master regulator of the genome through its ability to regulate and coordinate various steps of DNA damage response. Women who carry a mutation of the gene have greatly increased chance of developing breast cancer. The population of Pakistan has been substantially screened for somatic and germline mutations in BRCA. Breast cancer is the most common cancer of women in Pakistan. One every 8th women is found to carry the disease. A female may develop the disease through inherited mutations in the BRCA1 gene. The absence of mutation maybe attributed to small sample size of the study or may be due to the fact that the size of the gene is so large that a single axon may not be enough to screen for mutations