Life Science log

Finding suggests pharmaceutical drugs can be used to alter activity levels in humansBiologists at the University of California, Riverside have found that voluntary activity, such as daily exercise, is a highly heritable trait that can be passed down genetically to successive generations.Working on mice in the lab, they found that activity level can be enhanced with "selective breeding" ? the process of breeding plants and animals for particular genetic traits. Their experiments showed that mice that were bred to be high runners produced high-running offspring, indicating that the offspring had inherited the trait for activity."Our findings have implications for human health," said Theodore Garland Jr., a professor of biology, whose laboratory conducted the multi-year research. "Down the road people could be treated pharmacologically for low activity levels through drugs that targeted specific genes that promote activity. Pharmacological interventions in the future could make it more p