Mitochondria and neurodegeneration. Recent Report.

A breaking report newly implicates mitochondrial dynamics in neurodegenerative disease.

Duboff B, Götz J, Feany MB. Tau Promotes Neurodegeneration via DRP1 Mislocalization In Vivo. Neuron. 2012 Aug 23;75(4):618-32. PubMed PMID: 22920254

Fly model used (from the Materials and Methods): "Our Drosophila model of tauopathy is based on expression of either wild-type or FTDP-17 linked mutant forms of tau in neurons using the UAS/GAL4 bipartite expression system (Brand and Perrimon, 1993) and a panneuronal driver (elav-GAL4). In these studies, we predominantly express human tau carrying the R406W mutation ... To examine mitochondrial morphology in our model, we coexpressed tau with mitochondrially localized GFP (mitoGFP) in neurons of the adult brain."

Update: this review article looks relevant: Itoh K, Nakamura K, Iijima M, Sesaki H. Mitochondrial dynamics in neurodegeneration. Trends Cell Biol. 2013 Feb;23(2):64-71. PMID: 23159640; PMCID: PMC3558617.