Grant: Project Grant

Parkinson's Disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder that is characterized by the death of dopamine neurons in the brain, leading to motor and cognitive impairments. The disease effects ~1% of people older than 65 years old, and the economic burden of the disease in Canada is estimated to be more than $1.215 billion. Currently, there is no treatment to halt or reverse the progression of the disease, there are only medication that can delay the onset of symptoms to improve quality of life. Advances in genetic studies in recent decades have helped researchers identify many mutations in the human genome to be implicated in PD. However, a number of these hits have not been assigned a best candidate gene, and for those were assigned a candidate gene many are understudied in the context of PD. Therefore, for many genes implicated in PD by recent studies it is not clear what they do, how they interact and how they contribute to PD. We propose using a microscopic roundworm, Caenorhabditis elegans, to study the function of PD-associated genes and propose best candidate genes for risk loci that are yet unassigned. C. elegans is cheap and easy to maintain and our automated behavioural scoring system allows us to study morphological and behavioural effects of mutation rapidly and systematically in each of the genes and risk loci associated with PD. Understanding how these genes function in the nervous systems of living animals may shed light on what causes PD. Data from these studies will generate a model that can classify an uncertain gene as disease-relevant or not and also group genes into those contributing to specific phenotypes. Results from these studies may allow a greater understanding of the heterogeneous nature of PD and identify novel therapeutic targets for treating PD.