Topic: A53T

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is usually thought of as a motor disorder, although non-motor symptoms may precede the motor manifestations and are a key component of the PD. Among these, depression and anxiety are most prevalent symptoms and caused a greater symptomatic burden in women than in men. A dysfunctional serotonin (5-HT) system is generally considered a risk factor for depression. We propose the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)-dorsal raphe nucleus (DR) circuit as the key player underlying depressive/anxious disorders in PD, by virtue of its reciprocal connectivity. Female mice overe

Alpha-synuclein (ASYN) is a presynaptic neuronal protein related genetically and neuropathologically to Parkinson's disease (PD). However, the role of ASYN in the selective degeneration of specific neuronal populations such as the loss of dopamine (DA) neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNc) remains elusive. Since previous strategies for viral overexpression of ASYN in animals are not cell-type specific, we generated novel adeno-associated viral vectors (AAV) to Cre-dependently express human wild-type ASYN (ASYN-WT) or ASYN with pathogenic A53T or A30P mutations. This strategy allo