Word: spinal
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...Insemination. Big Blue. Any way you look at it, man seems bent on his own obsolescence. Now two Rutgers University professors say they have hit upon the chemical that causes female orgasm, and one of these days they may be able to simulate it. In studies of women with spinal cord injuries, the professors discovered an alternate pathway through which the sensation of an orgasm is sent to the brain. Through the vagus nerve, sensation can travel directly from the cervix, through the abdomen and chest cavity, into the neck and to the brain stem, bypassing the spinal column. That...
...just because it is so easy, but because its potential for good is so immense. The study of cloning can give the world deep insights into such puzzles as spinal cords, heart muscle and brain tissue that won't regenerate after injury, or cancer cells that revert to embryonic stage and multiply uncontrollably. Replicating Wilmut's work will elucidate what he along the way did right that nature, in these pathologies, does wrong...
...when a thin layer of cells in the developing embryo performs an origami-like trick, folding inward to give rise to a fluid-filled cylinder known as the neural tube. As cells in the neural tube proliferate at the astonishing rate of 250,000 a minute, the brain and spinal cord assemble themselves in a series of tightly choreographed steps. Nature is the dominant partner during this phase of development, but nurture plays a vital supportive role. Changes in the environment of the womb--whether caused by maternal malnutrition, drug abuse or a viral infection--can wreck the clockwork precision...
What biochemical magic underlies this incredible metamorphosis? The instructions programmed into the genes, of course. Scientists have recently discovered, for instance, that a gene nicknamed "sonic hedgehog" (after the popular video game Sonic the Hedgehog) determines the fate of neurons in the spinal cord and the brain. Like a strong scent carried by the wind, the protein encoded by the hedgehog gene (so called because in its absence, fruit-fly embryos sprout a coat of prickles) diffuses outward from the cells that produce it, becoming fainter and fainter. Columbia University neurobiologist Thomas Jessell has found that it takes middling concentrations...
...days, forcing the patient to start the long treatment process all over again. But at least one of Ho's patients has agreed to stop taking his drugs in another year or two--after his doctors assure him that tests show no evidence of HIV in his lymph, semen, spinal fluid or elsewhere in his body. When he does, we will know, probably within a few weeks, whether the virus has returned or whether it is gone for good...