尤物视频

Researchers at 尤物视频 in collaboration with a group from Baylor College of Medicine in Texas have identified a gene that appears to reverse Parkinson鈥檚 disease symptoms in fruit flies.  

SFU鈥檚 Verheyen lab discovered that increasing the amount of the fruit fly Cdk8 gene in flies with Parkinson鈥檚 causes the disease鈥檚 symptoms to reverse. The breakthrough was and the work at SFU was funded by a grant from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Parkinson鈥檚 Canada.

鈥淲ith familial Parkinsonism one of the big problems is a gene mutation that causes mitochondria to malfunction, and this can make cells sick or cause them to die,鈥� explains Esther Verheyen, SFU professor of molecular biology and biochemistry and corresponding author of the paper. 鈥淭his contributes to a lot of the cognitive losses and other disease symptoms.鈥�

Their research shows that fly Cdk8 and its human counterpart CDK19 have a role in regulating mitochondria, the powerhouses of the cell. Numerous studies have looked at ways to suppress Parkinsonism, but Verheyen鈥檚 research is the first to identify that particular function for the gene Cdk8 and CDK19.

SFU graduate student Jenny Liao and Hyung-lok Chung, a postdoctoral researcher at Baylor College of Medicine are the co-lead authors on the paper. Geneticist Hugo Bellen from Baylor College is a co-corresponding author.

鈥淲e figured out that fly Cdk8 can bypass a defect found in cells that carry a mutation that causes inherited Parkinson鈥檚,鈥� says Verheyen. 鈥淭his function involves helping cells get rid of defective mitochondria which is a function that is impaired in Parkinsonism. We can do genetic tricks to put more of the fly Cdk8 or human CDK19 gene into cells and we were able to make them healthy again.  

鈥淥ne of the powers of using flies to study human disease is that you can play with adding back good genes and taking away bad ones to find ways of alleviating disease symptoms. It's like solving a puzzle. Since many human disease genes have fly counterparts, we can gain valuable knowledge in flies that can be translated to clinical treatments.鈥�

Parkinsonism is an umbrella term that refers to several conditions, including Parkinson鈥檚 disease, marked by brain conditions that result slowed movements, stiffness and tremors.  

The Verheyen lab uses molecular, genetic and biochemical approaches to understand organismal development and diseases, such as cancer and Parkinson鈥檚. Their primary vehicle for such studies is the fruit fly as almost 75 percent of human disease genes have counterparts in the fruit fly, enabling the team to take advantage of the genetic tractability to understand protein function in numerous developmental contexts.

鈥淚nside of a fruit fly, their cells look and act very much like our cells. Their cells and organs really function in similar ways, which is kind of hard to wrap your head around when you think of a little fruit fly in a kitchen. But inside their body they have a nervous system, a digestive tract, muscles and many other comparable organs.鈥�

Verheyen explains that the fruit flies are manipulated to carry mutations that human patients might have, including mutations implicated in cancer or Parkinson鈥檚, and then start teasing apart what is happening at a cellular level.  

鈥淲e regularly put human genes into flies and see how they affect important functions.  We can get great insights into what causes diseases in cells and how we might alleviate those."