ABSTRACT
The completion and annotation of the genome sequence of Drosophila melanogaster and the availability of internet-accessible homology search algorithms make the identification of candidate Drosophila disease homologues relatively trivial. The existence of Drosophila homologues of five of the seven genes implicated in heritable forms of Parkinson's disease (PD) implies that the pathways regulated by these genes are likely to be conserved in Drosophila. Insight gleaned from studies aimed at the mechanism by which α-synuclein induces neuronal loss could lead to the development of treatment strategies impacting most cases of PD. While small molecule compounds offer real potential as therapeutic strategies, Drosophila models lend themselves directly to unbiased high-throughput screening of small molecule libraries in the search for novel compounds that are able to prevent pathogenesis. In particular, important priorities of future work should be to define the most appropriate methods for analysing dopamine neuron integrity and to resolve conflicts in studies of some of the current Drosophila models of PD.
