Isolation of NAA in Mice Brain Tissue Simulating Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory neurodegenerative disease. In MS the myelin, oligodendrocytes, axons, and neurons of the central nervous system (CNS) are destroyed resulting in neural conduction abnormality and disability. Dr. Freeman and Dr. McDonough’s research found that cells with defects in mitochondria coincided with decreased levels of the neuronal mitochondrial metabolite N-acetyl aspartate (NAA) in MS brain tissue. NAA is formed in neurons and sent to oligodendrocytes to synthesize acetate and create lipids that are used in myelin. They hypothesized that due to the defects in neuron mitochondria, this leads to a decrease in the composition of NAA, leading to changes in myelin production of MS. To test this hypothesis nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) was used to identify and isolate NAA in MS simulated mice brain tissue.