Generation and characterization of transgenic mice expressing mitochondrial targeted red fluorescent protein selectively in neurons: modeling mitochondriopathy in excitotoxicity and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.

Mitochondria have roles or appear to have roles in the pathogenesis of several chronic age-related and acute neurological disorders, including Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson's disease, and cerebral ischemia, and could be critical targets for development of rational mechanism-based, disease-modifying therapeutics for treating these disorders effectively. A deeper understanding of neural tissue mitochondria pathobiologies as definitive mediators of neural injury, disease, and cell death merits further study, and the development of additional tools to study neural mitochondria will help achieve this unmet need.

Pubmed ID: 22047141