Altered microbiome in a Parkinson's disease model Drosophila melanogaster has a negative effect on development

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disease, besides Alzheimer's Disease, characterized by multiple symptoms, including the well-known motor dysfunctions. It is well-established that there are differences in the fecal microbiota composition between Parkinson's disease (PD) patients and control populations, but the mechanisms underlying these differences are not yet fully understood. To begin to close the gap between description and mechanism we studied the relationship between the microbiota and PD in a model organism, Drosophila melanogaster. Among other experiments, we observed that the microbiota composition differed between control and Parkin mutant (park25) flies and their feces. This conclusions of the entire study are that there are functional effects of the fly microbiota on PD model flies, providing support to the developing body of knowledge regarding the influence of the microbiota on PD.