You don’t have to listen to heavy-metal music to be a metal head. The human brain harbors far more copper, iron and zinc than anywhere else in the body. Abnormally high levels of these metals can lead to disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Chris Chang, a faculty chemist with Berkeley Lab’s Chemical Sciences Division, has spent the past several years developing new probes and techniques for imaging the molecular activity of these metals in the brain. Speaking at the national meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS) in San Francisco, he discussed challenges and recent achievements in this area of research. “Brain physiology relies on unique inorganic chemistry not found elsewhere in the body,” Chang said. “Although it accounts for only two-percent of total body mass, it is the body’s most oxidatively active organ, consuming more than 20 percent of the oxygen we breathe. This high oxygen intake combined with the brain’s high content of copper and iron can lead to oxidative damage and subsequent neuronal death when levels of these redox-active metals rise and become misregulated.” Chang, who also holds faculty appointments with the University of California (UC) Berkeley’s Chemistry Department and is an investigator with the
The post Of Metal Heads and Imaging: Unique Molecular Probes for the Study of Metals in the Brain has been published on Technology Org.
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