What do coffee, tomatoes, wine and meats have in common with your brain?

They both contain similar acids!
However, instead of making your brain cells tangy & delicious, neuroscientist Gabsang Lee found that one in particular could be contributing to ALS. Lee sampled neurons like the ones seen here from ALS patients and found that they had two and a half times more arachidonic acid than cells from people without the disease.

To test whether this acid could be a target for ALS treatments, Lee tampered with the cell pathway that makes arachidonic acid in mice. He found that mice without the acid did not develop the muscle wasting characteristic of ALS.

Lee hopes that better understanding how our neurons use arachidonic acid will lead to treatments to halt the degenerative disease.

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