Optical detection of the spatial structural alteration in the human brain tissues and cells and DNA and chromatin due to Parkinsons disease

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that optical techniques, PWS and IPR, can detect structural alterations in brain tissues and DNA associated with Parkinson's disease, offering potential early biomarkers for diagnosis.

Contribution

The paper introduces a dual photonics approach combining PWS and IPR to identify structural disorder changes in brain tissues and DNA in Parkinson's disease, advancing early detection methods.

Findings

Increased structural disorder in PD tissues and cells detected by PWS.

DNA and chromatin structural alterations confirmed by IPR.

Histological analysis supports photonics-based results.

Abstract

Parkinsons disease (PD) is considered one of the most frequent neurological diseases in the world. There is a need to study the early and efficient biomarkers of Parkinsons, such as changes in structural disorders like DNA and chromatin, especially at the subcellular level in the human brain. We used two techniques, Partial wave spectroscopy (PWS) and Inverse Participation Ratio (IPR), to detect the changes in structural disorder in the human brain tissue samples. It was observed from the PWS experiment that there was an increase in structural disorder in Parkinsons disease tissues and cells when compared to normal tissues and cells using mesoscopic light transport theory. Furthermore, the IPR experiment also showed DNA and chromatin structural alterations that have the same trend and support the PWS results. The increase in mass density in the nuclei components, such as DNA and chromatin, can be linked to the aggregation of alpha-synuclein in the substantia nigra of the brain. This protein deposition is considered a significant cause of neuronal death in the brains of PD patients. We also did a histological analysis of brain tissues, which supports our results from dual photonics techniques. The results show that this dual technique is a powerful approach to detect the changes. Our results highlight the potential of the parameter, related to the structural disorder strength, as an efficient biomarker for PD progress, paving the way for research into early disease detection.