Drug and genetic screens on C. elegans models of brain and neuromuscular disorders in the search for new treatment Seminar
For more information regarding this seminar, please telephone Beatrice Murphy on 023 8059 5374 or email B.J.Murphy@southampton.ac.uk .
Event details
This talk will describe how the nematode worm C. elegans can be used to provide a simple genetic model of neuromuscular disorders and how this is being deployed to discover new drug treatments.
Spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) is one of the principal genetic causes of infant mortality. It has no effective treatment and in SMA patients certain motor neurons degenerate leading to muscle wasting, which in the most severe cases results in paralysis and death. This talk will describe how the nematode worm C. elegans can be used to provide a simple genetic model of neuromuscular disorders and how this is being deployed to discover new drug treatments.
Speaker information
Professor David Sattelle , University of Manchester. My research tackles two important questions in Neuroscience. First, can we harness the powerful genetic toolkit of Caenorhabditis elegans to discover more about disease mechanism and identify new routes to therapy for nervous system and neuromuscular disorders with unmet clinical needs. Secondly, can we bring to bear on the drug discovery process our fast growing knowledge of the structure, function and pharmacolgy of ligand-gated ion channels, which mediate the fast actions of neurotransmitter molecules. Our work involves genomics, genetics, molecular biology, electrophysiology and molecular modeling.