G. Webster Ross’s scientific contributions

... There are at least 90 genetic risk loci for PD as disclosed in a meta-analysis of genome-wide association studies in European ancestry (Nalls et al., 2019), with similarities and differences across different ethnicities (Zou et al., 2018;Foo et al., 2020;Pan et al., 2023). Pronounced environmental contributors include pesticides and traumatic brain injury that aggravate PD risk, and tobacco and coffee that are protective against PD (Ross et al., 2000;Ascherio et al., 2006;Thacker et al., 2007;Tanner et al., 2011;Gardner et al., 2015). Several mechanisms have been considered to be key driving PD pathogenesis and progression, including α-synuclein-centered abnormal protein misfolding and aggregation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and altered cellular trafficking and degradation (Morris et al., 2024). ...

Reference:

Substantia nigra and blood gene signatures and biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease from integrated multicenter microarray-based transcriptomic analyses