Scientists in Australia and Austria have described a
“network map” of genes involved in pain perception, with remarkable similarity
from fruit flies to people. The work should help identify new analgesic drugs.
Dr Greg Neely from the Garvan institute of Medical Research
in Sydney and Professor Josef Penninger from the Austrian Academy of Sciences
in Vienna had previously screened the 14,000 genes in the fly genome and
identified 580 genes identified with heat perception. In the current study,
using a database from the US National Centre for Biotechnology Information,
they noted roughly 400 equivalent genes in people, 35% of which are already
suspected to be pain genes.