Biochemistry: Join US-Iran mesarch project discovers heart disease clue

A US-Iranian research project has found a genetic mutation that although rare, will provide clues to the causes of more common forms of coronary artery disease.

Scientists at Yale University worked with colleagues at universities in Tehran to study an Iranian family, many of whose members died in their early 50s from heart attack or heart failure. They found the mutation in a gene called LRP6, which is part of the "Wnt signalling pathway", a network of proteins involved in metabolic processes.

Dan Wu, a Yale biochemist said that knowing how the Wnt pathway malfunctions could lead to new treatments for coronary artery disease, says.

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