PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Neon exposes hidden ALS cells

Brain's elusive motor neurons are dressed in fluorescence so scientists can find them and study why they die

2013-05-01
(Press-News.org) CHICAGO --- A small group of elusive neurons in the brain's cortex play a big role in ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), a swift and fatal neurodegenerative disease that paralyzes its victims. But the neurons have always been difficult to study because there are so few of them and they look so similar to other neurons in the cortex.

In a new preclinical study, a Northwestern Medicine® scientist has isolated the motor neurons in the brain that die in ALS and, for the first time, dressed them in a green fluorescent jacket. Now they're impossible to miss and easy to study.

The cells slide on neon jackets when they are born and continue to wear them as they age and become sick. As a result, scientists will now be able to track what goes wrong in these cells to cause their deaths and be able to search for effective treatments.

"We have developed the tool to investigate what makes these cells become vulnerable and sick," said Hande Ozdinler, senior author of the study and assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "This was not possible before."

Ozdinler and colleagues also identified the motor neurons that don't die, enabling scientists to study what protects them.

The study will be published in the Journal of Neuroscience on May 1.

ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, causes the death of muscle-controlling nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord (motor neurons). It results in rapidly progressing paralysis and death usually within three to five years of the onset of symptoms.

There are about 75,000 upper motor neurons affected in ALS out of some 2 billion cells in the brain. Previously, the only way to study the upper motor neurons was to extract them through surgery, a difficult process that was beyond the scope of most scientists and still didn't allow examination of the ailing neurons at various stages of the disease.

"You couldn't study them at the cellular level, so the research field ignored them," Ozdinler said. She is one of the few scientists in the country who studies cortical motor neurons. Most of ALS research has focused on the death of motor neurons in the spinal cord.

Key puzzle piece: Why ALS moves so swiftly

But the brain's motor neurons are a key piece of the ALS puzzle. Their disintegration explains why the disease advances more swiftly than other neurodegenerative diseases. It had previously been thought that the spinal motor neurons died first and their demise led to the secondary death of the brain's motor neurons. But Ozdinler's recent research showed that the motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord die simultaneously.

"The whole system collapses at once," Ozdinler said. "It's degeneration from both ends which is why the disease moves so swiftly."

Every voluntary movement is initiated and modulated by upper motor neurons -- answering a cell phone, typing an email, walking to the store. The upper motor neurons tell the spinal motor neurons what to do. In ALS, both the directing neurons and the neurons that create the movement disintegrate at the same time.

Finding the light that never goes out

Ozdinler spent the last four years figuring out how to permanently sheath cortical motor neurons in fluorescence.

Although scientists can flag spinal cord motor neurons in fluorescence, it wears off as the neuron ages because the process uses an embryonic gene. Ozdinler wanted a longer lasting effect so scientists could study the neuron as it ages and develops ALS. She sorted through 6,000 upper motor neuron genes that are vulnerable to ALS before she found one -- UCHL1 -- that is expressed through adulthood.

She used that gene -- which had been cloned with the fluorescence molecule -- and created a mouse model whose upper motor neurons shimmer in green. Then she mated that mouse with an ALS transgenic mouse model. The result is a mouse with fluorescent diseased motor neurons in the brain.

"Now we have a model of one motor neuron population that dies and one that is resistant," Ozdinler said. "That's the perfect experiment. You can ask what does this neuron have that makes it resistant and what does the other one have that makes it vulnerable? That's what we will find out."

Marina Yasvoina, a graduate student, and Baris Genc, a postdoctoral fellow, both in Ozdinler's lab, are the lead authors of the paper. Ozdinler collaborated with Gordon Shepherd, associate professor of physiology, and C.J. Heckman, professor in physiology, both at Feinberg.

"This work was possible thanks to the collaborative nature of Northwestern," Ozdinler said.

INFORMATION:

The research was supported by the Les Turner ALS Foundation, the Wenske Foundation and the Brain Research Foundation and grants NS050162, P30 NS054850-A1, NS061963 and F32 NS063535 from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health and NIH MAD Training Grants 5T32AG020506 and 5T32AG020506.

NORTHWESTERN NEWS: http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/

END



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Bizarre bone worms emit acid to feast on whale skeletons

2013-05-01
Only within the past 12 years have marine biologists come to learn about the eye-opening characteristics of mystifying sea worms that live and thrive on the bones of whale carcasses. With each new study, scientists have developed a better grasp on the biology of Osedax, a genus of mouthless and gutless "bone worms" that make a living on skeletons lying on the seafloor. In the latest finding, scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego describe how the wispy worms are able to carry out their bone-drilling activities. As published in the May 1 online ...

Study finds less-used regimen for treating children in Africa with HIV is more effective

2013-05-01
Philadelphia, April 30, 2013 — Researchers from The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and the Perelman School of Medicine at The University of Pennsylvania, along with colleagues at the Botswana-Baylor Children's Clinical Centre of Excellence, conducted the first large-scale comparison of first-line treatments for HIV-positive children, finding that initial treatment with efavirenz was more effective than nevirapine in suppressing the virus in children ages 3 to 16. However, the less effective nevirapine is currently used much more often in countries with a high prevalence ...

Researchers tackle collapsing bridges with new technology

2013-05-01
In this month's issue of Physics World, an international group of researchers propose a new technology that could divert vibrations away from load-bearing elements of bridges to avoid catastrophic collapses. Michele Brun, Alexander Movchan, Ian Jones and Ross McPhedran describe a "wave bypass" technique that has many similarities to those being used by researchers looking to create Harry Potter-style invisibility cloaks, which exploit man-made materials known as metamaterials to bend light around objects. Led by Movchan, who is at the University of Liverpool, the researchers ...

Behavior of seabirds during migration revealed

2013-05-01
The behaviour of seabirds during migration – including patterns of foraging, rest and flight – has been revealed in new detail using novel computational analyses and tracking technologies. Using a new method called 'ethoinformatics', described as the application of computational methods in the investigation of animal behaviour, scientists have been able to analyse three years of migration data gathered from miniature tracking devices attached to the small seabird the Manx Shearwater (Puffinus puffinus). The Manx Shearwater is currently on the 'amber' list of UK Birds ...

Sleep duration associated with higher colorectal cancer risk

2013-05-01
A new study is the first to report a significant positive association between long sleep duration and the development of colorectal cancer, especially among individuals who are overweight or snore regularly. The results raise the possibility that obstructive sleep apnea may contribute to cancer risk. "Our current study adds to the very limited literature regarding the relationship between sleep duration and/or sleep quality and colorectal cancer risk," said lead author Xuehong Zhang, MD, ScD, instructor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and associate ...

Researchers pinpoint upper safe limit of vitamin D blood levels

2013-05-01
Chevy Chase, MD––Researchers claim to have calculated for the first time, the upper safe limit of vitamin D levels, above which the associated risk for cardiovascular events or death raises significantly, according to a recent study accepted for publication in The Endocrine Society's Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM). There is increasing evidence that vitamin D plays a pivotal role in human physiology. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to cardiovascular events and mortality, but previous studies have found supplementation fails to decrease mortality ...

Cell response to new coronavirus unveils possible paths to treatments

2013-05-01
WHAT: NIH-supported scientists used lab-grown human lung cells to study the cells' response to infection by a novel human coronavirus (called nCoV) and compiled information about which genes are significantly disrupted in early and late stages of infection. The information about host response to nCoV allowed the researchers to predict drugs that might be used to inhibit either the virus itself or the deleterious responses that host cells make in reaction to infection. Since nCoV was recognized in 2012, 17 confirmed cases and 11 deaths have been reported—a high fatality ...

In the Northeast, forests with entirely native flora are not the norm

2013-05-01
Two-thirds of all forest inventory plots in the Northeast and Midwestern United States contain at least one non-native plant species, a new U.S. Forest Service study found. The study across two dozen states from North Dakota to Maine can help land managers pinpoint areas on the landscape where invasive plants might take root. "We found two-thirds of more than 1,300 plots from our annual forest inventory had at least one introduced species, but this also means that one-third of the plots had no introduced species," said Beth Schulz, a research ecologist at the Pacific ...

Chemo, radiation followed by surgery improves survival in lung cancer patients

2013-05-01
In one of the largest observational studies of its kind, researchers report that a combination of chemotherapy and radiation followed by surgery in patients with stage 3 non-small cell lung cancer improves survival. Patients who had chemoradiation therapy followed by surgery had twice the five-year survival rate of those who had only chemoradiation, says Dr. Matthew Koshy, a radiation oncologist at the University of Illinois Hospital & Health Sciences System and lead author of the study. The study, published online in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, looked at various ...

Advancing emergency care for kids: Emergency physicians do it again

2013-05-01
WASHINGTON —Most children with isolated skull fractures may not need to stay in the hospital, which finding has the potential to save the health care system millions of dollars a year ("Isolated Skull Fractures: Trends in Management in U.S. Pediatric Emergency Departments"). In addition, a new device more accurately estimates children's weights, leading to more precise drug dosing in the ER ("Evaluation of the Mercy TAPE: Performance Against the Standard for Pediatric Weight Estimation"). Two studies published online this month in Annals of Emergency Medicine showcase ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

So what do the world’s coastlines look like in 2025?

High-purity green hydrogen with very low tar from biomass, with chemical looping gasification

Not all "forever chemicals" are equal: Experts call for nuanced PFAS policy to protect human and public health and the environment

‘Hope isn’t enough – we need action when it comes to climate change’, an earth scientist’s guide for the future

Obesity rates in Canada increased after start of COVID-19 pandemic

Supporting autistic patients in health care

New study finds sharp increase in nicotine pouch ingestions among young children

LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA detect most massive black hole merger to date

Lonely adults may have a higher risk of diabetes

Intermittent energy restriction may improve outcomes in people with obesity and type 2 diabetes

Grandfather’s environmental chemical exposures may influence when girls get first period

Early-life exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals may fuel food preferences

Age at woman’s first period can offer clues about long-term health risks

AI-powered application enables clinicians to diagnose endocrine cancers faster and more accurately

Obesity-associated cancers tripled nationwide over past two decades

Consuming certain sweeteners may increase risk of early puberty

Experts suggest screening women with diabetes for intent to conceive at every doctor visit

Osteoporosis treatment benefits people older than 80

Consuming more protein may protect patients taking anti-obesity drug from muscle loss

Thyroid treatment may improve gut health in people with hypothyroidism

Combination of obesity medication tirzepatide and menopause hormone therapy fuels weight loss

High blood sugar may have a negative impact on men’s sexual health

Emotional health of parents tied to well-being of children with growth hormone deficiency

Oxytocin may reduce mood changes in women with disrupted sleep

Mouse study finds tirzepatide slowed obesity-associated breast cancer growth

CMD-OPT model enables the discovery of a potent and selective RIPK2 inhibitor as preclinical candidate for the treatment of acute liver injury

Melatonin receptor 1a alleviates sleep fragmentation-aggravated testicular injury in T2DM by suppression of TAB1/TAK1 complex through FGFR1

Single-cell RNA sequencing reveals Shen-Bai-Jie-Du decoction retards colorectal tumorigenesis by regulating the TMEM131–TNF signaling pathway-mediated differentiation of immunosuppressive dendritic ce

Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B Volume 15, Issue 7 Publishes

New research expands laser technology

[Press-News.org] Neon exposes hidden ALS cells
Brain's elusive motor neurons are dressed in fluorescence so scientists can find them and study why they die