A brain tricked into stress: scientists find a switch that may one day help children with Angelman syndrome

Angelman syndrome, a rare condition affecting about 1 in 20,000 children, comes from a missing gene that normally helps brain cells clear away unneeded proteins. At Washington University in St. Louis, Jason Yi's team traced what happens without it: a normally harmless enzyme called asparagine synthetase piles up and fools neurons into thinking they are under stress, so they stop growing. In mice engineered to develop the syndrome, blocking that enzyme's production restored normal brain growth and healthy behaviour. The study, published in Nature, is early — mice, not children — but it names a concrete treatment target where before there was only a missing gene and a mystery.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: tech innovation