Hello again – No blogging as I was away, first at a Gordon
Conference in the States, all about the cellular basis of Parkinson’s. One of
the rules of a Gordon Conference is it is all confidential, which I respect,
but I can say it was great to hear honest debate about the causes of
Parkinson’s with lots of highly relevant
new data. I was particularly impressed by the way mouse work was
catching up with the flies. In particular, I can mention a lovely presentation
by Austen
Milnerwood, as it is now published, showing that young mice with the LRRK2-G2019S mutation
have an early hyperactivity phase, which is followed by degeneration of dopaminergic
neurons [1]. Fascinating to see a mouse paper showing the same signs as our own
fly work, published only last April [2].
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| Trend - the Gateway to Leaning fly neuroscience modelling health and disease |
My other visit was to ‘Trend’ [3], where I was helping lead the fifth course in
fly neuroscience (though my first visit). There I did 5 lectures
on the ways that fly genetics can be
used to work out the interconnections of disease genes and find novel
approaches to therapy. Nice to be able to pass on ideas I’d be reading ad
hearing recently. In the afternoons, we had practicals on the theme of flies
modeling human disease, using flies with mutations in a gene associated with
epilepsy, and other flies with mutations associated with Parkinson’s. There
were 18 students on the course, and it was great to see their enthusiasm for
neuroscience, and to see them getting stuck into the practical labs. They took
off the flies at the end of the experiments to continue their exploration of
the effects of these mutations. A very encouraging experience: Trend [3] is
doing a marvelous job all across Africa, training students in top class
science.
See you again soon!
chris
1] Volta et al, (2015) http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.parkreldis.2015.07.025
2] Afsari et al, (2014) http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/hmg/ddu159
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