What a chaos a dead dopaminergic neuron can cause in the human body! It can lead to the puzzling Parkinson’s disease. We all associate rigidity in body, tremors in the muscles, immobility hassles, etc with this medical disorder. The fact is that this is a very complicated problem for the biologists and the physicians.
Cellular death and Parkinson’s disease
Parkinson’s disease is associated with cellular death. The death of a dopaminergic neuron is a result of various molecular processes that are interrelated and are being conducted on a genetic level, the why and how of these are still a mystery. The scientific community is busy correlating these facts and studying about the influence they have on the body.
“Parkinson’s disease map”
Researchers are busy burning mid night oil at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), the University of Luxembourg now have gathered data about the molecular and genetic causes of Parkinson’s disease and are integrating the evidence together and call it a “Parkinson’s disease map,” or “PD Map”.
It will facilitate the systematic study of PD through a newly gained clarity of the existing knowledge about the disease. Talking about the biomedical researches going on for Parkinson’s, Dr. Marek Ostaszewski, coordinator of the LCSB PD Map project states that lots of material is available on this in the new scientific publications but is useless until the data is analyzed, sorted, given meaning after careful correlation, and then used for the benefit of the patients.
The centre was founded about 4 years ago and the LCSB researchers in tandem with their colleagues from the Systems Biology Institute (SBI) in Tokyo, Japan presented the data in the form of an interactive map.
In the past also virtual maps have been made and molecular processes have been depicted along with their systemic analysis. Talking about the advantage of the PD map, Dr. Marek Ostaszewski says “By uniting the existing knowledge about PD, the map sheds light on the connections between pieces of the puzzle nobody had thought existed — and which will form the basis for brand new research hypotheses. We can more accurately identify pathological mechanisms that are incompletely understood and where more scientific work is needed. On this basis, research hypotheses can be established and verified by highly focused laboratory experiments,” he assured.
The map also acts as a trigger for more extensive scientific investigation. The scientific community actually wants the research organizations to get advantage from this and IBBL (Integrated Biobank of Luxembourg) supports the LCSB in its endeavor.
The contents of the map can be changed after proper evaluation, and Ostaszewski, feels that an online portal can be very helpful in this case. Everybody can do their bit in the map he feels and said “Every Parkinson’s researcher has a special focus and considers his or her own research to be the most important, A good web portal will allow everyone to tend to their own little garden, so-to-speak, while ensuring the information is correctly categorized and meaningfully correlated.”
This “Parkinson’s disease map”, is mentioned in the journal, Molecular Neurobiology.
