The Impact of Parkinson’s Disease on Mammalian Adult Neurogenesis

Abstract

Parkinson’s disease (PD) has been reported to negatively affect adult neurogenesis. Mitochondrial dysfunction associated with PD may be involved, given that recent studies have identified mitochondria to be central regulators of neural stem cell (NSC) fate decisions. For this thesis, we sought to characterize adult neurogenesis in PINK1 and parkin knockout (KO) mouse models of PD. Immunohistochemical staining of subventricular zone (SVZ) and subgranular zone (SGZ) tissue sections from 6 month old mice was performed in order to identify and quantify changes in specific cell populations involved with adult neurogenesis. The loss of PINK1 or parkin was found to cause aberrant changes in adult neurogenesis, particularly in the SGZ. Going forward, it would be interesting to determine if the observed changes in adult neurogenesis were the result of mitochondrial dysfunction.