The gene PIEZO2 is responsible for instinctive body position in space.
In human DNA accidentally found the gene responsible for instinctive determination of the position of the body in space, the so-called “sixth sense”.
Biologists from the National Institute of health, USA revealed an unexpected function of the gene PIEZO2 in the human body and develop a kind of sixth sense, studying the history of two patients in American hospitals, suffering from heavy forms of a scoliosis.
Exploring their DNA, scientists found a strange thing – it turned out that both patients had been damaged gene PIEZO2, which earlier biologists believed responsible for the recognition of light taps.
This coincidence has led scientists to check whether a given piece of DNA with other functions of the body, the violation of which can cause scoliosis.
With the consent of patients themselves and their relatives, the researchers tested how their hands and other body parts react to vibrations, pinpricks, hot and cold objects and other stimuli. It turned out that, in addition to touch recognition, PIEZO2 played a different role in the body, which in General can be described as “sense of space”.
It is that person PIEZO2 is in good condition, quite well understand, where and how is his body if he closes eyes, what subjects it concerns, and what surrounds it. The simplest test of this feeling is familiar to all hospitals offer neurologist to touch the nose with your eyes closed and find and touch the object nearby.
As shown by experiments on volunteers, lacking PIEZO2, they can’t even fulfill such a simple task, if their eyes are closed. With open eyes they easily dealt with the nose items and walked around the room, in spite of the deformation of hands and feet, though, and kept the balance with great difficulty.
Scientists suggest that these differences in the results “blind” and “sighted” tests are related to the fact that the brain of these patients have adapted to the lack of a “sixth sense” and learned to use eyes and ears to obtain information about body position in space and balance.
