Talk by Maria Doitsidou

A meeting of the Edinburgh Research Interest Group was held on Saturday, 7th November 2015 at the Scottish Centre for Regenerative Medicine, courtesy of Dr Tilo Kunath.

Dr Maria Doitsidou, currently based in the Centre for Integrative Physiology in the University of Edinburgh, gave a talk entitled:

A C. elegans model of dopaminergic neuron development and degeneration: What can a tiny nematode teach us about human disease?

Maria writes:

My research focuses on the study of dopaminergic neurons in health and disease: how does an undifferentiated cell become a specialised dopamine-producing neuron? And what happens in cases of disease, like Parkinson’s, when these neurons begin to degenerate? We utilize the nematode C. elegans as a model organism and high-throughput genetic approaches to study these biological processes and identify neuroprotective pathways. In collaboration with clinical researchers, we investigate the genetics of neurodegenerative disease in humans, and bring findings back to the worm for functional validation.

More than 20 ERIG members attended and were rewarded with an excellent presentation which led to a lively discussion session extending over an informal lunch.

The slides from Maria’s talk can be downloaded as a pdf file by clicking on the following link: Doitsidou talk

You can also read a summary of the talk written by one of our members who took notes during the meeting: Doitsidou summary

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