Yerba mate (Ilex paraguariensis) in a Drosophila model of Parkinson´s disease: Can it protect synaptic connections?

BALLESTERO, P.; ROMANO, S.; HAUCHE H.; RIVERO RC.; TARAVINI IRE.; GERSHANIK OS.

Congreso; XXXV Congreso Anual (VIRTUAL) de la Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencia.; 2020

Sociedad Argentina de Investigación en Neurociencia

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second neurodegenerative disorder in prevalence. Itsorigin is unknown, but its pathophysiological characteristic is the progressivedegeneration of dopamine-releasing neurons of the Substantia nigra.A clinical studyconducted in Argentina revealed that the consumption of yerba mate (YM) has an inverseassociation with the risk of developing PD (Gatto, 2015), and we found that YM extractinduces a strong neuroprotective effect on dopaminergic neurons in vitro (Bernardi,2019). Given these results, we hypothesized that the YM extract would also protectneurons from the deleterious effects caused by the expression of human alpha synuclein(aSyn) in a widely used Drosophila melanogaster model of PD. To reach this goal, we haveset up the administration of YM to these fly disease model and produced preliminarybehavioral and molecular data. Preliminary experiments using GRASP (GFPReconstitution Across Synaptic Partners) technique, showed an increased GFP signal (areporter of synaptic connections) between circadian and dopaminergic neurons in agedwild-type flies treated with YM, suggesting more connectivity in treated flies.Unfortunately, these experiments were interrupted by the pandemic when we weregoing to replicate this study in the aSyn flies. Our preliminary results show that YMadministration improves motor coordination in PD flies and could also maintain synapsesin wild-type flies; perhaps an indication of healthier neuronal circuits?