BANDUNG, AYOBANDUNG.COM – Generally, many people think that after being declared dead, humans will actually shut down all the systems in the body. Even though some cells are still active and even grow several hours after death. This condition is what researchers refer to as Gen Zombie.
Launching from Medical Xpress, a few hours after death, certain cells were on the human brain still active. Some cells even increase their activity and grow. This is stated in new research from the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).
In the study just published in the journal Scientific Reports, UIC researchers analyzed gene expression in fresh brain tissue several times after removal to simulate the post-mortem interval and mortality. They found that gene expression in some cells it increases after death.
Gen zombie it is specific for one cell type, that is inflammatory cells which are called sel glial.
“That sel glial enlarged after death is not all that surprising given that they are inflamed and their job is to clean up everything after a brain injury such as lack of oxygen or a stroke, “said Dr. Jeffrey Loeb, Professor John S. Garvin and head of neurology and rehabilitation at UIC College of Medicine and associated author. .
Previously, most research studies used networks the human brain post-mortems to find potential treatments and cures for disorders such as autism, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease did not take into account gene expression post-mortem or cell activity.
“Most studies assume that everything in the brain stops when the heart stops beating, but that’s not the case,” says Loeb.
Loeb and his team noticed that global pattern gene expression on the network the human brain fresh does not match published reports about gene expression the postmortem brain of people without neurological disorders or from people of all kinds neurological disorders.
“We decided to run a simulated death experiment looking at the expression of all human genes, at a time point from zero to 24 hours of a large pool of newly collected brain tissue,” Loeb said.
They found that about 80 percent of the genes analyzed remained relatively stable for 24 hours after death and their expressions did not change much. Genes that include these are often referred to as housekeeping genes which provide basic cellular functions and are commonly used in research studies to demonstrate tissue quality.
The second group of genes is known to exist in neurons and has been shown to be involved in complex activities the human brain such as memory, thinking activities, and seizures, are rapidly degraded within hours of death.
Meanwhile, the third group of genes, the zombie genes, increased their activity at the same time as the neuron genes decreased. The pattern of post-mortem changes peaked at about 12 hours.
“The good news from our findings is that we now know which genes and cell types are stable, which are degraded, and which increase with time after death,” Loeb said.
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