Source: University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Date: July 15, 2010
Summary:
PHILADELPHIA – Investigators have found that fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) males -- in which the activity of an Alzheimer’s disease protein is reduced by 50 percent -- show impairments in learning and memory as they age. What’s more, the researchers were able to prevent the age-related deficits by treating the flies with drugs such as lithium, or by genetic manipulations that reduced nerve-cell signaling.
The research team -- Thomas A. Jongens, Ph.D., associate professor of Genetics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine; Sean M. J. McBride M.D, Ph.D. and Thomas McDonald M.D., at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine; and Catherine Choi M.D., Ph.D. at Drexel University College of Medicine – worked with the familial form of Alzheimer’s disease (FAD), an aggressive form of the disease that is caused by mutations in one of the two copies of the presenilin (PS) or amyloid precursor protein (APP) genes. Studies in animal models have previously shown that the FAD-linked PS mutations lead to less presenilin (psn) protein activity.
Their findings are published in this week’s issue of the Journal of Neuroscience.
