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Regular physical exercise has been shown to delay and alleviate neurodegenerative disease. However, optimum physical exercise conditions that provide neuronal protection, and more importantly, exercise-related factors and mechanisms remain poorly understood. We have established several exercise models in C. elegans to control the duration and intensity of swimming exercise of animals. Using a combination of genetics, reverse genetics, proteomics, and molecular biology approaches, we investigate the optimal exercise conditions, factors, mechanisms, and signaling pathways that lead to decrease of neuronal loss in multiple different neurodegenerative disease models, including Parkinson’s disease (PD) models and a tauopathy model. We are also screening for compounds that can enhance or replace the beneficial effects of exercise and look for drug targets for treating neurodegenerative diseases.

Related Publications:

Bhadra, J.*, Sridhar, N.*, Fajrial, A.K., Hammond, N., Xue, D.#, and Ding, X.Y.# (2023). Acoustic Streaming Enabled Moderate Swimming Exercise Reduces Neurodegeneration in C. elegans (2023). Science Advances 9, eadf5056 ( and ). *Equal contribution, #Co-corresponding authors. ¶¶Òõ¶ÌÊÓƵ Boulder Today,