Researchers are probing links between the tiny power plants that provide energy for cells and brain degeneration, writes Dick Ahlstrom.
Trinity College leads a new international research project looking at the minute power plants that drive cellular activities. More particularly the work seeks to understand how these power plants, the mitochondria, could be implicated in serious disorders such as Parkinson's disease.
The College recently received a four-year €1.2 million grant from the EU's Marie Curie "transfer of knowledge" research programme, explains TCD senior lecturer in neuroscience and overall project co-ordinator, Dr Gavin Davey.
"My research area is neurodegeneration," says Davey, who works in the School of Biochemistry and Immunology and also in the Institute of Neuroscience. "Mitochondria have been identified as being adversely affected in Parkinson's."
He wants to know why, and to establish whether the disease process damages mitochondria to cause the symptoms or if the disease is present before the mitochondrial damage takes place.
Anyone who has taken Leaving Cert biology will be familiar with the essential work done by the mitochondria. These tiny bodies found inside cells employ the Krebs cycle to produce the energy transfer molecule ATP that drives cellular functions.
The average person contains about seven kilogrammes of mitochondria which on a typical day will make 65kg of ATP, needed in particular by the muscles and the brain. This startling figure is only the output at rest, adds Davey, who says it can double when a person is involved in sport.
When mitochondria are damaged they compromise the ability of muscle cells and neurons to work normally and to withstand different types of cellular stress, says Davey. Dysfunctional mitochondria are associated with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases and are also thought to control the cellular aging process.
The project title is Characterisation of Mitochondrial Proteins in the Brain. Not all mitochondria in the brain are the same, Davey points out. Those found in neurons are different than those in other tissue forms and are also more prone to damage in Parkinson's patients.
The idea is to try to identify the differences between the various types of mitochondria in the brain, he says. "We are trying to understand the differences at a protein level."
Under the Marie Curie programme, young researchers are transferred between EU states, and Trinity is bringing in five postdoctoral researchers from abroad who are experts in studying protein expression or "proteomics" and in imaging.
Research students will also transfer from Trinity to partner research centres in Cambridge, Heidelberg, Siena and Istanbul.
The funding will allow Trinity to establish a centre for brain mitochondrial research, says Davey. "The research will focus on understanding the different types of mitochondria in the brain using mass spectrometry and imaging techniques and will shed light on the reasons why Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease occur."
The researchers already know that the efficiency of mitochondrial ATP processing is diminished in Parkinson's. "What is causing that, we don't know," says Davey.
Being able to profile the huge range of proteins being expressed by the mitochondria should help however.
"We will be able to identify the proteins that are missing in damaged mitochondria or present in other mitochondria. If we find a protein that is different, maybe we can do something about it," he says.