Now, scientists at Whitehead Institute, in collaboration with
colleagues at several research centers, including the University
of Missouri's School of Biological Sciences, have identified a
key biological pathway that, when obstructed, causes Parkinson's
symptoms. Even more importantly, they have figured out how to
repair that pathway and restore normal neurological function in
certain animal models. "For the first time we've been able to
repair dopaminergic neurons, the specific cells that are damaged
in Parkinson's disease," says Whitehead Member and Howard Hughes
Medical Institute Investigator Susan Lindquist, senior author on
the paper that will be published June 22 online in Science. In
2003, researchers in the Lindquist lab described using yeast
cells as "living test tubes" in which they could study
Parkinson's. A paper published in Science reported that when a
Parkinson's-related protein called alpha-synuclein was over-
expressed in these cells, clumps of misshapen proteins gathered
near the membrane, a