Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Molecular chaperones and ALS. Recent Report.

This open access paper describes use of a fly model of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), which is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, to link protein aggregation to neurotoxicity.

Gregory JM, Barros TP, Meehan S, Dobson CM, Luheshi LM. The aggregation and neurotoxicity of TDP-43 and its ALS-associated 25 kDa fragment are differentially affected by molecular chaperones in Drosophila. PLoS One. 2012;7(2):e31899. PubMed PMID: 22384095; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC3284513.

Flies used in the study include transgenic animals in which the Gal4-UAS system was used to express HA-tagged TDP-43.

See also the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center's page on ALS-related fly stocks

A search with "amyotrophic lateral sclerosis" (without the quotes) entered into the box "Or disease full text search" at DIOPT-DIST brings up more than 100 results.

This YouTube video (unrelated to the article cited above) shows a comparison of flies mutant for an ALS-related gene ortholog with normal flies in the "climbing assay," a simple assay of motor control.  After a quick tap of the vial, normal flies will reorient themselves and crawl to the top of the vial.

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