Fresno State researchers use fruit flies to find
the connection between BMAA and neurodegenerative
syndrome. High resolution pictures, such as the one
above, are used to observe the effect of BMAA by
documenting the flies’ walking patterns.
Photo courtesy of Danial Husian / The Collegian

Major university study uses fruit flies to understand Lou Gehrig’s disease

An interdisciplinary collaboration team within Fresno State’s biology and chemistry department is trying to understand neuron degeneration disease, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, by using fruit flies in a major study.

Fresno State biology professor Ulrike Muller and Fresno State biomechanics student Danial Husain are conducting a study to better understand the possible cause of Lou Gehrig’s disease. The study might be published in The Journal of Experimental Biology. A poster presentation at a South Carolina science conference in 2012 is also being planned.

The study uses drosophila, also known as fruit flies, to record the effect of the consumption of neurotoxin glutamate, also known as Beta-methylamino-L-alainine, or BMAA.

BMAA might have an effect on the motor ability of an organism. BMAA has been found in some foods.

The goal is to understand the symptoms of Lou Gehrig’s disease or specifically amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/parkinsonism-dementia.

The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association, also known as ALS association, describes Lou Gehrig’s disease as a “progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.”

Muller said Lou Gehrig’s disease has become a common disease in humans, especially older generations.

“People who [are] diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s [disease] usually have only a few years to live,” Muller said. “You cannot survive the disease.”

She said that the 10 percent of Lou Gehrig’s disease patients are genetically prone to it, while the cause of the disease for the other 90 percent remains unknown and has become a challenge for many researchers around the world.

To better understand the disease, Muller and Joy Goto from the Fresno State chemistry department decided three years ago to initiate the research.

Muller explained that in understanding a disease in humans, she needed an animal model. Muller and her team of researchers use fruit flies because they have a relatively short life cycle. This makes it easier for the research team to observe their growth and eventually death.

“It is a nice and fast organism,” Muller said. “Because an organism usually catches the Lou Gehrig’s disease quite young.”

The syndrome progresses more rapidly “when you are reaching pension age, so you want to have an organism that gets old very fast,” Muller added.

Muller explained that some humans start developing this disease because they consume BMAA, an amino acid that is produced by blue-green algae and has been found in some foods.

Fresno State researchers believe the symptom is mostly environmental.

Muller and her voluntarybased research team have been conducting the research by feeding BMAA to the fruit flies and observing the results.

“Indeed our fruit flies developed similar problems as humans,” Muller said. “They lose motor control just like Parkinson’s [disease]patients.”

Besides focusing on the molecular effects caused by BMAA, Muller said the research is also focusing on the behavioral outcomes from the infected fruit flies.

The fruit flies are given different doses of the neurotoxin BMAA and the researchers are observing how different levels of neurotoxins work in the fruit flies’ motor ability.

So far, the study has found that at higher dosages of consumption, about the same level as daily food consumption for human, the fruit flies faced an elevated mortality. They had severe motor disability compared to those who were fed a smaller dosage of BMAA.

However, the fruit flies with smaller dosages of BMAA develop unexpected behavioral outcome.

“The surprising thing is when you give the flies lower dosage of BMAA, they become hyperactive,” Muller said. “That is surprising because we expected them to go shaky but we didn’t expect them to become hyperactive.”

Muller said that even the fruit flies with small dosages of BMAA eventually got Lou Gehrig’s disease.­ However, in lower dosage of BMAA, the flies went through a hyperactive period before they finally lost their motor ability.

By using an animal model for a very lethal disease, Muller explained that they need people from different departments to collaborate in the research.

Biologists are in charge of observing the behavioral outcomes of the infected fruit flies, while chemists are focusing on the molecular level of the research. Computer scientists are working on the programming to make the research process more effective and efficient.

Students who are working in the research study are learning how to work as a team and collaborate with different departments.

Husain said that through this project, he has gained not only academic benefits, but has also been able to learn how to work with people and different responsibilities.

“I have been learning a lot from this project, probably more than I have learned in any of my classes,” Husain said. “Because … in classes people tell you what to do, but when you have to do it yourself, it’s kind of a different feeling.”

Husain said he is working on the abstract and introduction of the paper and plans to have it published next year.

“Any help from anyone interested in gaining new experience in research would be very helpful for us,” Kevin Maxkwee, co-author of the research paper, said. “I suggest science students to start getting involved in research as early as their sophomore years.”

Muller said Associated Students, Inc., (ASI) and Fresno State have been supporting the research financially, although in the future Muller and Goto are hoping to get other funding.