Clearer view of Parkinson’s
A new study finds that a protein key to Parkinson’s disease has likely been mischaracterized. The protein, alpha-synuclein, appears to have a radically different structure in healthy cells than previously thought, challenging existing disease paradigms and suggesting a new therapeutic approach. “Our data show that alpha-synuclein was essentially mistakenly characterized as a natively unfolded protein that lacked structure,” said Dennis Selkoe, the Vincent and Stella Coates Professor of Neurologic Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School and senior author of the paper, to be published online Aug. 14 in the journal Nature. “We think this discovery has fundamental importance for understanding both how alpha-synuclein normally functions and how it becomes altered in Parkinson’s.” When it comes to proteins, function follows form. A protein consists of a chain of chemical building blocks (amino acids), typically folded into an exquisite three-dimensional structure. Each twist and turn in the chain contributes to...