Modeling Parkinson’s Disease in C. elegans

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is an adult onset neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by selective degeneration of neurons primarily in the substantia nigra. At present, the pathogenesis of PD is incompletely understood and there are no neuroprotective treatments available. Accurate animal models of PD provide the opportunity to elucidate disease mechanisms and identify therapeutic targets. This review focuses on C. elegans models of PD, including both genetic and toxicant models. This microscopic worm offers several advantages for the study of PD including ease of genetic manipulation, ability to complete experiments rapidly, low cost, and ability to perform large scale screens for disease modifiers. A number of C. elegans models of PD have been generated including transgenic worms that express α-synuclein or LRRK2, and worms with deletions in PRKN/pdr-1, PINK1/pink-1, DJ-1/djr-1.1/djr-1.2 and ATP13A2/catp-6. These worms have been shown to exhibit multiple phenotypic deficits including the loss of dopamine neurons, disruption of dopamine-dependent behaviors, increased sensitivity to stress, age-dependent aggregation, and deficits in movement. As a result, these phenotypes can be used as outcome measures to gain insight into disease pathogenesis and to identify disease modifiers. In this way, C. elegans can be used as an experimental tool to elucidate mechanisms involved in PD and to find novel therapeutic targets that can subsequently be validated in other models.