Investigating mitochondrial transport in sporadic ALS

My project will focus on the mitochondrial transport in sporadic ALS (sALS) cases, using sALS iPSC derived motor neurons. Sporadic ALS stands for the majority of ALS patients, while the mechanism is poorly understood compared to familial cases. One of the reasons is that sALS is hard to model in the past, while the occurrence of iPSC provides promising technique for research into sporadic disease. What’s more, mitochondrial is one of the most important cargo for axonal transport, which is synthesized in soma but must be transported as far as to the synapse, to support the high energy metabolism there. The transportation failure of mitochondrial can cause axonal dysfunction, contributing to the dying back hypothesis.