New Technique Isolates Brain Cells Associated With Parkinson’s Disease

Carnegie Mellon University researchers have developed a new technique for isolating a type of brain cell associated with Parkinson's disease symptoms, enabling them to study that cell type in detail. The technique, which works only in specially bred mice, costs less than previous methods for isolating these brain cells, said Alyssa Lawler, a Ph.D. candidate in biological sciences. By using it, she and her colleagues already have detected previously undiscovered changes to how the diseased neurons sense and use oxygen. The researchers describe the technique and their findings in a research paper published online by the journal JNeurosci. "Even a small portion of the brain can have dozens of different cell types," said Andreas Pfenning , an assistant professor in CMU's Computational Biology Department. "Each of these cell types has different roles in the behavior of an animal and also in disease." Separating cells of a certain type from their neighbors is thus a critical first step for researchers who want to study them.