An international research team led by Professor Stephanie Grond from the Institute of Organic Chemistry at the University of Tübingen has found that the natural substance collinolactone reduces artificially-induced stress on nerve cells, protecting them from the kind of damage that occurs in neurodegenerative diseases. Collinolactone is isolated from soil bacteria, and its chemical structure is identical to that of rhizolutin, which was isolated from bacteria on the roots of the Asian medicinal plant ginseng. Last year, a Korean research team discovered in animal experiments that rhizolutin can dissolve the protein aggregations around nerve cells that are characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. The study by Professor Grond and her team has been published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
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Source: Phys.org