Brain’s hidden “junk” – mysterious RNA circles produced by cells damaged in Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease
SciTechDaily discusses a research study by Team Scherzer that identified over 11,000 distinct RNA circles that characterized brain cells implicated in Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease.
Gene variant found linking people of African descent to higher Parkinson’s risk
Dr. Ekemini A. U. Riley, managing director of ASAP, joins PBS NewsHour to discuss findings from the GBA1 discovery and the power of collaborative, open science to unlock discoveries for populations traditionally underrepresented in research.
UNILAG researchers unravel novel Parkinson’s genetic risk factor in Africans
The Guardian Nigeria reports on GP2 and its collaboration with the University of Lagos (UNILAG) to uncover a genetic variant that increases the risk of PD in Africans and African admixed populations.
Study adds to evidence that Parkinson’s starts in the gut
This story reports on new findings from Team Sulzer that indicates that PD begins in the gut and that what triggers initial gastrointestinal changes in Parkinson’s could be a misdirected immune attack.
Dopamine neurons may be more diverse than thought
Parkinson’s News Today discusses a cellular study of mice by Team Awatramani that found that a specific subset of dopamine-producing nerve cells in the brain appear to respond to movement acceleration and correspond with the region where cell death is particularly pronounced in PD.
Parkinson’s disease: Essential role in neuroinflammation found for a subset of brain macrophages
Team Sulzer used a mouse model of Parkinson’s disease to show that border-associated macrophages — not microglia — mediate the neuroinflammatory response in the brain.
