Parkinson's Disease Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Parkinson's Disease, including details on symptoms, treatment, genetics, medication.

Aggregation promoting C-terminal truncation of alpha-synuclein is a normal cellular process and is enhanced by the familial Parkinson's disease-linked mutations.

Li W, West N, Colla E, Pletnikova O, Troncoso JC, Marsh L, Dawson TM, Jäkälä P, Hartmann T, Price DL, Lee MK

Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.

Abnormal biology of alpha-synuclein (alpha-Syn) is directly implicated in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease and other alpha-synucleinopathies. Herein, we demonstrate that C-terminally truncated alpha-Syn (alpha-SynDeltaC), enriched in the pathological alpha-Syn aggregates, is normally generated from full-length alpha-Syn independent of alpha-Syn aggregation in brains and in cultured cells. The accumulation of alpha-SynDeltaC is enhanced in neuronal cells as compared with nonneuronal cells. Significantly, the expression of familial Parkinson's disease-linked mutant alpha-Syn is associated with the enhanced cellular accumulation of alpha-SynDeltaC. Moreover, substoichiometric amounts of alpha-SynDeltaC enhance the in vitro aggregation of the more abundant full-length alpha-Syn. Finally, cases of alpha-synucleinopathy exhibit increases in the total soluble alpha-Syn and a higher proportion of soluble alpha-SynDeltaC, a condition favoring the aggregation of alpha-Syn. Collectively, our results indicate that the biology behind the generation and accumulation of alpha-SynDeltaC is likely to have relevance for the initiation and the progression of alpha-Syn aggregation in vivo.

Published 9 February 2005 in Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 102(6): 2162-7.
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