300898 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Appendicular Skeleton, Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Neurodegeneration
Document Summary
Neurodegenerative disorders have recently become more understood in context to what parts of the cell they affect. Diseases, such as parkinson"s disease, alzheimer"s disease, huntington"s disease, and (als) have had breakthrough research that supports the conclusion that neurodegenerative diseases affect the cytoskeleton. Parkinson"s disease is a condition that causes the degradation of neurons, resulting in tremors, rigidity, and other non-motor symptoms. Research has found evidence that microtubule assembly and stability in the cytoskeleton is compromised causing the neurons to degrade over time. Alzheimer"s disease is much like parkinson"s in that it is also a neurodegenerative disease that affects the cytoskeleton. Tau proteins, which stabilize microtubules, malfunction in patient"s affected by alzheimers, causing pathology with the cytoskeleton. Huntington"s disease has also been found to affect the cytoskeleton of cells by excess glutamine in the huntington protein, which is involved with linking vesicles to the cytoskeleton.
