The Molecular Biology of Neurological Disease

The Molecular Biology of Neurological Disease reviews advances that have been made in understanding the molecular mechanisms of neurological disorders as well as immediate and future applications of molecular biological techniques to clinical practice. This book explores the molecular genetics of neurological disease such as muscular dystrophy, Joseph disease, and Huntington's disease, along with the mitochondrial genes implicated in such conditions. This text is comprised of 18 chapters and begins by introducing the reader to the basic principles and methods of molecular genetic techniques used in the diagnosis of neurological disease. Attention then turns to several aspects of genetic expression in the brain, including the extent to which the genome is expressed in the brain. The next chapter focuses on the visualization of polyadenylated messenger RNAs in individual cells in mammalian brain using in situ hybridization techniques, combined with immunohistochemical localization of specific proteins and neuropeptides implicated in diseases such as Alzheimer dementia. This book also discusses the molecular biology of chemical synaptic neurotransmission; proteins involved in the regulation of nervous system development; and gene expression in skeletal muscle. This text then concludes with a summary of the neurological gene map as it stands in the latter part of 1987. This book is intended for physicians who grapple with the problems of neurological disorders on a daily basis, including neurologists, neurologists in training, and those in related fields such as neurosurgery, internal medicine, psychiatry, and rehabilitation medicine.