THE clumps of defective protein long assumed to kill brain cells in people with Huntington’s disease actually help these cells survive.
Huntington’s disease is triggered by mutations in a protein called huntingtin, causing it to aggregate and eventually form large, insoluble clumps within cells. The conventional view is that these clumps kills cells, but they might also be a harmless side effect or even a protective mechanism. “The possibilities kept me up at night,” says Steve Finkbeiner of the University of California, San Francisco.
So his team developed a sophisticated method, involving genetic engineering and computer-driven microscopes, for tracking the…
