If this is not your name, click here. Other Ophthalmic Surgery Organ Transplantation Orthopaedics Other Osteoarthritis Osteoporosis Otitis Otorhino. ALS is a degenerative disorder of the brain and spinal cord, which causes weakness and wasting of muscles.
Patients eventually become paralyzed and die, usually within five years.
The gene that causes ALS when mutated was discovered in 1993 by researchers in MGH laboratory of Robert H. Brown Jr., MD, PhD, who is a co-author of the current Nature paper. In the current study, the MGH researchers used two strains of transgenic mice with mutations in key genes. One strain with mutations in SOD1 develops an ALS-like muscle disease. The other strain has a specific mutation called M17Z in the gene coding for the ICE protein. The leader of the group identifying the ICE gene was Junying Yuan, PhD, also a coauthor of the Nature paper.