Abstract
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a rapidly escalating neurodegenerative disorder marked by dopaminergic neurodegeneration, α-synuclein aggregation, and motor and non-motor impairments. Current therapies largely provide symptomatic relief and fail to prevent disease progression, underscoring the need for novel disease-modifying strategies. The marine biome has emerged as an unexplored reservoir of bioactive metabolites with neuroprotective potential, yet their therapeutic relevance in PD remains incompletely explored. Here, we report that Stutzerimonas stutzeri, a marine bacterium isolated from the Gulf of Mannar, exerts robust neuroprotective effects in Caenorhabditis elegans PD models. Dietary administration of S. stutzeri rescued dopaminergic neuronal loss, mitigated α-synuclein expression, and improved motor and sensory phenotypes. Mechanistic analyses revealed suppression of ferroptosis, evidenced by restoration of iron homeostasis, attenuation of lipid peroxidation, and recovery of ftn-1 expression. Our findings establish S. stutzeri as a previously unrecognized marine-derived therapeutic prospect for PD intervention and highlight ferroptosis modulation as a tractable therapeutic axis in neurodegeneration.
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Data availability
The datasets generated for the current study are available in the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) repository under accession code GSE312231. The Reviewer Token is uzqbimekrvydlkt for accessing the GEO dataset.The processed data downloaded from the Galaxy platform after analysis using the LIMMA package is provided in **Supplementary Information 4** .
Abbreviations
- PD:
-
Parkinson’s disease
- DA:
-
Dopaminergic
- SNpc:
-
Substantia nigra pars compacta
- NGM:
-
Nematode growth medium
- L1:
-
First larval stage
- MDA:
-
Malondialdehyde
- DEGs:
-
Differentially expressed genes
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Acknowledgements
SS is supported by the University Grants Commission, India. AD is supported by the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, India. SG is supported by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, India. We gratefully acknowledge the Director of CSIR-CDRI for supporting this work by providing the essential research facilities. The CSIR-CDRI communication number is 11139.
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The work is supported by in-house funding (IHP0046) from the Director, CSIR-CDRI, to SV.
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**SS-** Investigation, Data curation, Validation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing—original draft.**AD-** Investigation, Data curation, Formal analysis, Visualization, Methodology, Writing—original draft, **SG-** Investigation; Data curation; Formal analysis; Visualization, Writing—original draft.**ML-** Investigation; Data curation**MP-** Resources; Investigation; Methodology; Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.**SV-** Conceptualization; Investigation; Data curation; Formal analysis; Methodology; Project administration; Resources; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing - original draft; and Writing—review & editing.
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Singh, S., Damodaran, A., Goswami, S. et al. Marine bacterium Stutzerimonas stutzeri mitigates Parkinson’s disease pathology in C. elegans via ferroptosis modulation. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-46881-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-46881-4
