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Comment by coetzeesg | Hacker News Reader

There is some evidence that the brain (and substantia nigra) is not the only region where risk for Parkinson's can accumulate. There may be some ties to developmental processes, lymphocytes, and the liver and fat cells[0].

[0]http://www.nature.com/articles/srep30509 [0]http://parkinsonsnewstoday.com/2016/08/11/parkinsons-risk-mu...

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Hmm. In your studies can you identify retinal tissue? Guessing not since it's such a relatively small amount and might not have a clear marker like adipose/liver tissue.

Accumulating mutations could cause Parkinson's--some sort of inflammatory syndrome from altered metabolic pathways, you can probably explain it better than me--but the study in OP seems to be suggesting retinal degeneration is a symptom, right? Maybe retinal tissue could be a "canary in the coal mine" because it's more sensitive to these changes in metabolism? I'd be interested to know what you think.

Yea, I can only work with tissues that I have chromatin marks for, and retinal tissue is not one that is easily available. But it's possible that the retinal features are an early detector of disregulation (in some pathway to Parkinson’s), and it would be interesting to see precisely what it’s detecting, perhaps shedding more light on inherited risk.

Ah, it's chromatin marks you need. Well I guess you could get a lot of retinal tissue from the rat model they use and try to find some. Interesting that this finding is in an animal that doesn't depend as much on vision as we do. Might be worth determining if the result holds up in e.g. a macaque model.

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