Lynsey Bilsland

What has been the highlight of your day?

I think the highlight from the Monday's session was the presentation of several new models including:

1) a model we can use to study inflammation in MND.
2) a model to investigate how unwanted, damaged proteins are removed from the cell.
3) the development of zebra fish model of MND will be useful and is readily generated. It will allow the evaluation what is going wrong in MND and screening new drugs to treat the condition.

Another highlight was use of nasal oflactory cells to provide CNS tissue with which to test the effect of drugs.

What message would you give to someone with MND about what you’ve learnt so far?

We saw several presentations highlighting how lessons learned from the study of other neurodegenerative disease can be applied to MND. Furthermore, we saw evidence of significant advances in technology which will hopefully advance our knowledge of disease pathegenesis.

The development of new models in mice, zebrafish and pigs - again hopefully will become useful research tools.

Which presentation did you find most interesting?

I thought Dr Lemmens talk was very interesting as it highlighted the benefits of the zebra fish in MND models as a tool to test small molecules for their ability to treat MND.

The benefis of this model are rapidity of screening as well as being smaller and chaeper than other models.

The presentation by Dr Kriz was also intresting. This talk explained the development of the whole animal imaging assay in which they looked at the role of motor neurone support cells in the development of MND.

Who has made the biggest impression on you?

Jeff Lichtman’s talk made a big impression on me. Jeff and his lab have recently published a ‘brainbow’ mouse in which different motor neurones are labelled with different fluorescent colours, allowing the tracing of individual axons to map the innvervation pattern of each nerve cell.

Currently they are developing an ultra microtome, which serially sections large volumes of biological tissue which can then be analysed using scanning electron microscopy to reconstruct the tissue.

How will what you have learnt at the symposium influence your future work?

One point that has become clear with relation to my work is the need to determine the mechanisms underlying why some specific types of motor neurone degeneration more than others, at least in early stages of the disease.

Another interesting aspect regards mitochondrial physiology. Mitochondria are compartments within the cell that provide the energy supply. Not only are their structure and function reportedly altered in ALS but there is evidence that their transport is altered too. This may be interesting to examine further – especially since the development of mice that have fluorescent mitochondria.