Swedish Scientists Discover Unique Muscle Fibers in Human Soft Palate (Dec 8, 2015)
A team of scientists at Umeå University in Sweden has discovered a special group of muscle fibers in the soft palate of the human mouth.
“This discovery of special group of fibers gives us deeper insight into the complex anatomy and physiology of the upper airway and evolutionary specialization,” said Dr Farhan Shah, a team member and the lead author of a paper in the Journal of Anatomy.
According to the team, the newly discovered muscle fibers seem to be present in greater number in snorers and sleep apnea patients.
“These unique fibers have a special molecular build-up with an absence or modified design of some key proteins,” Dr Shah said.
Dr Shah and co-authors have taken a new approach to see if snoring vibrations and tissue stretch can cause neuromuscular damage in upper airways and result in obstructive sleep apnea and swallowing dysfunction.
These unique fibers were discovered while investigating muscles from both healthy subjects and obstructive sleep apnea patients.
“It can be concluded that a subgroup of muscle fibers in the human soft palate appears to have special biomechanical properties, and their unique cytoarchitecture must be taken into account while assessing function and pathology in oropharyngeal muscles,” the scientists said.
Mollivirus sibericum.
“Mollivirus sibericum was initially spotted using light microscopy as rounded particles multiplying in a culture of Acanthamoeba castellanii inoculated with a sample of Siberian permafrost from the Kolyma lowland region,” they wrote in a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Although no read sequences were close enough to detect known Poxvirus and Herpesvirus isolates in the metagenome of our permafrost sample, we cannot rule out that distant viruses of ancient Siberian human (or animal) populations could reemerge as arctic permafrost layers melt and/or are disrupted by industrial activities,” the scientists concluded.