On July 13, PLos one—an interactive online service for peer-reviewed scientific and medical research based in the United States—featured a study on the development of the Walker-Warburg syndrome (WWS) by a multiple-university research team led by Soka University Department of Bioinformatics Professor Shoko Nishihara.

WWS is a progressive muscular dystrophy believed to be a congenital disorder in which victims not only suffer muscle weakness and wasting, but also severe brain malformations and eye abnormalities. WWS patients rarely survive birth and, for those that do, chances of their survival to adulthood are low.

The Nishihara-led team included researchers from Kyorin University School of Medicine, the government’s Invertebrate Genetics Laboratory, and Department of Biological Science of Tokyo Metropolitan University. It studied the mechanism of the onset of WWS through tests conducted on two cloned variants of the common fruit fly, demonstrating that the mutant insects were models for human muscular dystrophy. Their paper proposes a novel mechanism in which high myoblast (a precursor of various muscle cells) density and position derangement leads to programmed cell death, muscle disorganization and muscle cell defects.

The Soka-led research team is funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology under an initiative to promote strategic research at the university level.