On January 27, 2010, the Journal of Neuroscience published a research article entitled "Expression of β-Amyloid Induced Age-Dependent Presynaptic and Axonal Changes in Drosophila". This work was carried out by Xiao-liang Zhao, Jiang-xiu Tan, Xiao Zhang, Bao-zhu Zhang, Yu-hang Wang, Han-yu YangCheng, from the unit of Dr. Fu-de Huang at ION, in collaboration with Wen-an Wang, Jian-kang Huang, Hong-lian Zhu, Xiao-jiang Sun at Shanghai Jiaotong University. This paper is highlighted in "This Week in The Journal".

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common form of dementia in elderly people. Synaptic dysfunction and loss are widely believed to be the cellular basis of cognitive deficits, but the nature and progression of synaptic structural and functional changes in AD are essentially unknown. By expressing beta-amyloid (Aβ) in adult Drosophila with a tissue specific driver, the authors generated a neural circuit AD model, in which they performed extensive time-course analysis of the function and structure of both axon and presynaptic terminals at the identified single-neuron level. They found that Aβ expression caused intracellular accumulation of Aβ and age-dependent depletion of presynaptic mitochondria, possibly through inhibition of mitochondrial fission, prior to a range of other presynaptic and axonal changes. These findings may shed new light on the cellular mechanism of AD pathogenesis.

This work was supported by the grants from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Science and Technology and Shanghai Municipal Government.