FXN and Friedreich ataxia: For this reason, the consequences of frataxin depletion have been studied, at the histological level, in DRGs using conditional knockout mice [7] and samples from patients with FA [8, 9] Also, using primary cultures of frataxin-deficient DRG neurons, our group observed alterations of several parameters such as a decrease in mitochondrial membrane potential, increased fodrin cleavage by calpain and caspase, and Bax induction [10, 11].