Thanks Gerry for the reference.

The article pointed to [1] states:

"Arati Inamdar and Joan Bennett, researchers in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers, used fruit flies to establish the connection between the compound – popularly known as mushroom alcohol – and the malfunction of two genes involved in the packaging and transport of dopamine, the chemical released by nerve cells to send messages to other nerve cells in the brain."

In my view this is an important result. It goes some way to giving a causality to the associations between the geographic prevalence of some species of fungus and Parkinson's, which have already been noted in this forum. See, for instance:

Histoplasma capsulatum http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/thread170268.html

Reference:

[1] http://news.rutgers.edu/news/symptom...0#.UoFkOXBFDVJ

John