38 RESULTS
COMMENT This work by Gerez et al. helps us fill out the molecular machinery that controls uptake and degradation of α-synuclein from the extracellular space. Consistent with other literature, the authors seem to see a signature around endosomal pathways for ...
COMMENT Classifying gene-expression patterns and their relationship to genetic variants is a very important way to determine proximate genetic mechanisms arising from genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The use of laser capture microdissection and RNA-seq is ...
COMMENT The current set of GWAS-related studies indicates that there are still significant loci to find for Alzheimer’s disease, and likely for other neurodegenerative conditions, as sample sizes increase. By definition, these will be loci with smaller effect ...
COMMENT The paper by Richarme and colleagues suggests that DJ-1 can repair glycated nucleotides, derived from either RNA or DNA, in addition to the previously claimed removal of glycation products from proteins. Thus, DJ-1 homologues would be the only extant ...
COMMENT The paper by Szelechowski et al. is very interesting and another example of how studying viruses can lead to insights into broader biological processes. I find it intriguing that viruses that are dormant in neurons might protect their cellular hosts by ...
COMMENT The key thing these authors show in this paper, and this is why it is an important study, is that Fbxo7 mutations interact with an established pathway for recessive parkinsonism. The authors clearly show that the mutations are loss of function, which is ...
COMMENT This paper by Chan et al. develops the previous reports of an effect of LRRK2 on neurite length to include a specific molecular effector, Rac1. That LRRK2 influences neurite length in cell culture is reasonably well established, as several labs have ...
COMMENT This study by Lin et al. provides an excellent opportunity to reevaluate the proposed role of LRRK2 on neurite outgrowth and maintenance. Work from the Abeliovich lab first showed that LRRK2, and especially mutant LRRK2, can limit the outgrowth of ...
COMMENT A progressive, and eventually dramatic, depletion of dopamine-containing neurons that project from the substantia nigra pars compacta to the striatum is one hallmark of Parkinson disease. Nigral cell loss is thought to be the pathological event leading to ...
COMMENT One of the difficulties with the longstanding idea that dopamine is a contributor to neuronal cell loss in Parkinson disease (PD) and related disorders is that it appears neither to be necessary nor sufficient to cause cell death. Dopamine can’t be ...
COMMENT The paper by Whitworth and colleagues adds to the work of Plun-Favreau suggesting that there is a relationship between the PINK1/parkin pathway and HtrA2 (aka Omi). Some of the data are very interesting, such as Fgure 4 which shows a change in processing ...
COMMENT I do think this is an interesting study. The possibility that GATA-1 in peripheral tissues, and GATA-2 in the CNS, might regulate synuclein is intriguing and the data here look very convincing. One possibility is that one might be able to target GATA-2 in ...
COMMENT The idea that proteasome dysfunction occurs in several neurodegenerative disorders has received quite a lot of attention in recent years. The strength of evidence varies between diseases, but the evidence in Huntington disease (HD) is reasonably strong. ...
COMMENT This paper supports the longstanding hypothesis that mitochondrial derangements are sufficient to cause cell death in nigral neurons, which may be an important clue for Parkinson disease. There is some later cell loss in the ventral tegmental area, which ...
COMMENT This paper shows in a striking way that the Lrrk2 gene, which is associated with dominantly inherited PD in humans, has dramatic effects on neuronal morphology in vitro and in vivo. A key point from this study is that the kinase activity is critical for ...
