User:Mcintee/Transneuronal Degeneration

Wikipedia Proposal: Transneuronal Degeneration

Presented by: Alexander Layton, Margaret McIntee, and Kayla Morse

General Definition
Transneuronal degeneration is atrophy of certain neurons after interruption of afferent axons or death of other neurons to which they send their efferent output.

Effects

 * Cells shrink
 * Cytoplasm increases in electron density
 * Nucleic acid material is reorganized
 * Membrane bound systems swell
 * Nucleolus also gets replaced with a large homogenous cluster of electron dense material
 * Astrocytes and microglia digest dying neurons that experience transneuronal degeneration through phagocytosis

Causes

 * Results from interruption of afferent axons
 * Cut off from sending information to postsynaptic cells
 * Cell removal
 * Cell death or damage (like in excitotoxicity)
 * Respiratory chain-deficient neurons
 * Have adverse effect on normal adjacent neurons and induce trans-neuronal degeneration
 * This lead to some neuron death

Types

 * Orthograde transneuronal degeneration
 * Neuronal degeneration cause by loss of inputs
 * also called trans-synaptic degeneration
 * Retrograde transneuronal degenertaion
 * Neuronal degeneration cause by loss of trophic support for the target

Associate Diseases

 * Huntington's disease
 * Multiple system atrophies
 * Alzheimer’s disease

Current and Future Research

 * Macaque monkey enucleation of the eye
 * Rat olfactory bulb removal

Division of Workload
We have decided to meet once a week so that we can go over each other's work, discuss individual research findings, and make a cohesive article. The workload will be divided up by subtopic and each person will be assigned one or two subtopics depending on length.