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Maternal smoking could trigger widespread genetic changes in infants

AIMAN INAM

NEW YORK: In a research conducted here, scientists noted that maternal smoking could cause extensive inherited changes, which distress structure of associations amid brain cells long after the birth.

Moreover, maternal smoking has been connected to behavioral transforms like attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), addiction and conduct disorder.

Nicotine disturbed a master controller of DNA packaging, which in turn manipulates commotion of genetic materials that is essential to the development and stabilization of synapses among brain cells.

Senior study author Marina Picciotto from Yale University in the US stated: “When this regulator is induced in mice, they pay attention to a stimulus they should ignore.”

He further maintained: “It is exciting to find a signal that could explain the long-lasting effects of nicotine on brain cell structure and behavior. It was even more intriguing to find a regulator of gene expression that responds to a stimulus like nicotine and may change synapse and brain activity during development”, Picciotto added in a paper published online in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

 

M M Alam

M. M. Alam is a Pakistan-based working journalist since 1981. Karachi University faculty gold medalist Alam began his career four decades ago by writing for Dawn, Pakistan’s highest circulating English daily. He has worked for region’s leading publications, global aviation periodicals including Rotors (of USA) and vetted New York Times as permanent employee of daily Express Tribune. Alam regularly covers international aviation and defense-related events including Salon Du Bourget (France), Farnborough (United Kingdom), Dubai (UAE). Alam has reported thousands of events and interviewed hundreds of people in Pakistan, UAE, EU, UK and USA. Being Francophone Alam also coordinates with a number of French publications.