Two centuries ago, an English surgeon began noticing three elderly strangers with disrupted movements in the crowded streets of London. They shared similar characteristics of trembling hands, speaking difficulty, and postural instability. These symptoms were documented in ‘An Essay of the Shaking Palsy’ by the surgeon James Parkinson. While the discovery of the disease was merely through observation, there has been tremendous progress in the science of shaking palsy, later renamed as Parkinson’s disease in regards to the surgeon’s name. In a paper published this month by the Journal of Young Investigators, Diego Machado Reyes and Dr. Ana Lilia Reyes-Herrera explore the many ways technology has advanced the diagnosis and monitoring of people with Parkinson’s.

If you look at each of the cells in our body, you will notice that cells, such as a neural cell and a red blood cell look completely different. Cells with different functions such as muscle cells, liver cells, heart cells, etc. all have differing looks; yet, these differences are not a variation in genes. All of the cells in an individual’s body have the same genetic information, and the dissimilarity that we observe are the result of regulating gene expression. Gene expression is the production of proteins, and in a cell not every part of the genome is used to make all the possible proteins. Rather, complex interactions between various molecules regulate our genes. Regulation of genes is important for both development and maintenance of one’s health. Disease states are linked to a dysregulation of genes, where some genes may be overexpressed or expressed when it should be silent. Therefore, scientists have been looking into gene regulation to distinguish the root causes of certain diseases and innovate therapeutic agents.

The bursting of green buds into a vivid splash of white petals to mark the arrival of spring is a feast for the senses. A fully visible spectacle to human sight, there is more to the plant’s biological phenomena than what meets the eye. Deep in a structure of Arabidopsis halleri’s leaves, a molecular machinery governs the entire behavior of this perennial weed. An exhaustive genetic modulation corresponding to seasonal pattern exists as corroborated in a study by Daniel Phillips, Dr Wenbin Guo, and Dr Runxuan Zhang recently published in the Journal of Young Investigators (Phillips, Guo, Zhang, 2021).