In the most severe forms of Huntington’s disease, a glutamine-coding DNA sequence on chromosome 7, CAG, can be repeated between 40 and 120 times. But how, exactly, does this create a toxicity in neurons?  Scientists at the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida have answered that question: the excessive triple repeats not only generate toxic amount of glutamine, the RNA’s also suck up proteins that are essential to the cells’ normal functions.  This group has recently described a method to find compounds that target this aberrant process.   MORE