Anavex Life Sciences Corp (AVXL)

[MycroftHolmes]

Re: Sigma Analogy

Thanks Mycroft and Falconer for sharing your deeper understanding of the science. Would someone create an analogy in a different setting?
Say .. the Fire Analogy ..

Or whichever you envision..

The analogy I would use is the below:

One could consider my wife a Sigma 1 Receptor. Under normal conditions, I eat a very clean diet and she occasionally makes me homemade pizza. When one is on a lean diet, an occasional meal rich in fats and salts can be very good as fuel and make the body healthier.

However, under pathologic, or unhealthy, conditions I've been eating way to much pizza and it starts dramatically impacting my health. My wife now goes into "rescue firetruck" mode and a cascade of events occur. She cleans the house of my hidden stashes of candy and potato chips, stops making me pizza, and forces me to excercise.

One can say she is "dual regulating" my fat intake as she gives me a little fat when I have none to be helpful but falls on me like swift justice when I have too much.

Now, let's say during one of these cycles that she hasn't quite realized I've been over indulging in pizza. She gets a phone call (or she is agonized) from Dr. Missling telling her to go into clean eating/excercise mode early this time because I'm getting older and I don't bounce back like I once did.

So our original quote:

These experiments showed that s1R activity results in a dual regulation of the mitochondrial oxidative status: in basal conditions, s1R activity triggers a moderate ROS increase, putatively used as a physiological signal, while in pathological conditions, agonists promoted a marked anti-oxidant effect.

Would read:

These experiments showed that my wife results in a dual regulation of fat intake: in healthy conditions, my wife triggers a moderate Pizza increase, as a physiological signal to my body to uptake some essential fats, while in unhealthy conditions, or when Dr. Missling calls her, she promotes a marked anti-pizza effect.

This is a pretty perfect analogy when one considers that to work against my wife's goal I would need to "antagonize" her.

Exactly as it occurs in real life.

Cheers

Mycroft