Monday, June 4, 2018

Review of fly models of Friedreich's Ataxia

Calap-Quintana P, Navarro JA, González-Fernández J, Martínez-Sebastián MJ, Moltó MD, Llorens JV. Drosophila melanogaster Models of Friedreich's Ataxia. Biomed Res Int. 2018 Apr 5;2018:5065190. PMID: 29850527; PMCID: PMC5907503.

From the abstract: "Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA) is a rare inherited recessive disorder affecting the central and peripheral nervous systems and other extraneural organs such as the heart and pancreas. This incapacitating condition usually manifests in childhood or adolescence, exhibits an irreversible progression that confines the patient to a wheelchair, and leads to early death. FRDA is caused by a reduced level of the nuclear-encoded mitochondrial protein frataxin due to an abnormal GAA triplet repeat expansion in the first intron of the human FXN gene. FXN is evolutionarily conserved, with orthologs in essentially all eukaryotes and some prokaryotes, leading to the development of experimental models of this disease in different organisms. These FRDA models have contributed substantially to our current knowledge of frataxin function and the pathogenesis of the disease, as well as to explorations of suitable treatments. Drosophila melanogaster, an organism that is easy to manipulate genetically, has also become important in FRDA research. This review describes the substantial contribution of Drosophila to FRDA research ..."

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