NZ scientists' discovery holds hope for people with brain
disorders Drs Tom Brittain and Joanna Skommer of the University
of Auckland’s School of Biological Sciences, working in
collaboration with Dr Subadhip Raychaudhuri at the University of
California, Davis, have discovered that the protein neuroglobin
may protect against diseases such as Alzheimer’s by preventing
brain cells (neurons) from dying in response to physiological
stress. This discovery opens new avenues for future therapeutic
interventions in several neurological disorders. Neuroglobin was
first identified in 2000 by German scientists Thorsten Burmester
of the Institute of Zoology, University of Hamburg and Thomas
Hankeln of the Institute of Molecular Genetics, Johannes
Gutenberg University of Mainz. It was found to be expressed
mainly in the brain (hence neuroglobin). Until then, only two
proteins from this globin protein family had been described,
each of them important for regulating cellular oxygen. Since its
discovery, scientists have lear