Midbrain single-cell sequencing to understand Parkinson’s Disease

Researchers from the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) at the University of Luxembourg, in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin, investigated the different cell types present in the human midbrain to better understand their respective role in Parkinson's disease. They examined post-mortem samples from people affected by the disease and from healthy individuals, and generated a unique single-nuclei RNA sequencing dataset. Their results, recently published in the scientific journal Brain , revealed the existence of a specific cluster of cells in the midbrain of Parkinson's patients. They also highlighted the role of glial cells - the non-neuronal cells in the brain - in the pathology of this movement disorder. Parkinson's disease in a nutshell. Parkinson's disease (PD) is characterised by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the midbrain but the exact causes of the disease are still not well understood. These neurons control brain functions like voluntary movement and behavioural processes such as stress.