Parkinson's disease

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne evolutionary neurobiologist is using Drosophila to investigate how organisms adapt to novel environments.

His work was pivotal to understanding the mechanisms of neurodegenerative diseases, particularly Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Making specific alterations to the bacterial population in a rat’s lungs either better protects the animals against multiple sclerosis–like symptoms or makes them more vulnerable, a study finds—the first demonstration of a lung-brain axis.

Conservation of structures and functions between single-celled fungi and human cells allow researchers to probe the brain.

Meet some of the people featured in the October 2021 issue of The Scientist.

The single-celled fungus allows researchers to study Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS and other brain diseases with unparalleled speed and scale.

The cell conversion strategy restores neurons and motor functions lost as a result of an induced Parkinson’s-like illness in the animals.

The University of Toronto and University of Vienna pharmacologist developed L-dopa, a precursor to dopamine that remains the most widely used therapy for Parkinson’s disease.

The BioCollective, a company that transforms whole stool samples into microbial metadata, is developing the US’s first national microbiome reference material.

The plant geneticist has revolutionized researchers’ understanding of how light affects plant growth and development, and is engineering plants to combat climate change.

Brain banks have struggled to convince unaffected individuals to donate, hampering studies on “cognitively normal” neurodevelopment and aging.

This year’s most beautiful illustrations covered topics including the molecular underpinnings of Parkinson’s disease and strategies for tracking marine organisms around the world’s oceans.

New evidence points to a waste-clearing problem in patients’ cells, rather than the accumulation of protein tangles, as the root cause of the neurodegenerative disease.