Selvarathinam Hannah, Elkhalil Aladin, Schargel Walter E, Ghose Piya
Department of Biology, The University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas, United States.
MicroPubl Biol. 2024 Mar 13;2024. doi: 10.17912/micropub.biology.000897. eCollection 2024.
Pharyngeal pumping and its reduction following mechanical insult are well-studied behaviors. Here, we assessed new applications of pharyngeal pumping assays in the study of neurodegenerative disease and psychiatric illness. We examined five genes implicated in two forms of neurodegeneration, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia (HSPs) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD), for both baseline pharyngeal pumping and the depressive response after touch stimulus. All five mutants showed reduced baseline pumping rate, suggesting a potential utility of this assay to study neurodegenerative disease on a broad scale. However, regarding the induced pumping response, which has been linked to schizophrenia, only specific genes, the HSP-related Atlastin and the AD-related tau, showed defects. Together, we highlight two pharyngeal pumping behaviors as genetically distinct, potentially informative settings for understanding the functions of genes linked to neurodegeneration.
咽泵动及其在机械损伤后的减弱是经过充分研究的行为。在此，我们评估了咽泵动测定法在神经退行性疾病和精神疾病研究中的新应用。我们研究了与两种神经退行性疾病形式，即遗传性痉挛性截瘫（HSPs）和阿尔茨海默病（AD）相关的五个基因，检测了它们的基线咽泵动情况以及触摸刺激后的抑郁反应。所有五个突变体的基线泵动速率均降低，这表明该测定法在广泛研究神经退行性疾病方面具有潜在效用。然而，关于与精神分裂症相关的诱导泵动反应，只有特定基因，即与HSP相关的Atlastin和与AD相关的tau，表现出缺陷。总之，我们强调两种咽泵动行为在基因上是不同的，对于理解与神经退行性变相关基因的功能可能具有潜在的信息价值。
