Mutations in the DJ-1 Gene Associated with Autosomal Recessive Early-Onset Parkinsonism
10 Jan 2003-Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science)-Vol. 299, Iss: 5604, pp 256-259
TL;DR: It is shown that DJ-1 mutations are associated with PARK7, a monogenic form of human parkinsonism, and these findings indicate that loss ofDJ-1 function leads to neurodegeneration.
Abstract: The DJ-1 gene encodes a ubiquitous, highly conserved protein. Here, we show that DJ-1 mutations are associated with PARK7, a monogenic form of human parkinsonism. The function of the DJ-1 protein remains unknown, but evidence suggests its involvement in the oxidative stress response. Our findings indicate that loss of DJ-1 function leads to neurodegeneration. Elucidating the physiological role of DJ-1 protein may promote understanding of the mechanisms of brain neuronal maintenance and pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease.
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TL;DR: Treatments targeting basic mitochondrial processes, such as energy metabolism or free-radical generation, or specific interactions of disease-related proteins with mitochondria hold great promise in ageing-related neurodegenerative diseases.
Abstract: Many lines of evidence suggest that mitochondria have a central role in ageing-related neurodegenerative diseases. Mitochondria are critical regulators of cell death, a key feature of neurodegeneration. Mutations in mitochondrial DNA and oxidative stress both contribute to ageing, which is the greatest risk factor for neurodegenerative diseases. In all major examples of these diseases there is strong evidence that mitochondrial dysfunction occurs early and acts causally in disease pathogenesis. Moreover, an impressive number of disease-specific proteins interact with mitochondria. Thus, therapies targeting basic mitochondrial processes, such as energy metabolism or free-radical generation, or specific interactions of disease-related proteins with mitochondria, hold great promise.
5,368 citations
Cites background from "Mutations in the DJ-1 Gene Associat..."
...Mutations in DJ-1 are also associated with autosomal recessive juvenile P...
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TL;DR: PD models based on the manipulation of PD genes should prove valuable in elucidating important aspects of the disease, such as selective vulnerability of substantia nigra dopaminergic neurons to the degenerative process.
4,872 citations
TL;DR: High-resolution recombination mapping and candidate gene sequencing in 46 families found six disease-segregating mutations in a gene encoding a large, multifunctional protein, LRRK2 (leucine-rich repeat kinase 2), which may be central to the pathogenesis of several major neurodegenerative disorders associated with parkinsonism.
2,757 citations
TL;DR: Dementia with Lewy bodies is related to mutation of α‐synuclein, and the novel mutation, that substitutes a dicarboxylic amino acid, glutamic acid, with a basic amino acid in a much conserved area of the protein, is likely to produce severe disturbance of protein function.
Abstract: Familial parkinsonism and dementia with cortical and subcortical Lewy bodies is uncommon, and no genetic defect has been reported in the previously described sibships We present a Spanish family with autosomal dominant parkinsonism, dementia, and visual hallucinations of variable severity The postmortem examination showed atrophy of the substantia nigra, lack of Alzheimer pathology, and numerous Lewy bodies which were immunoreactive to alpha-synuclein and ubiquitin in cortical and subcortical areas Sequencing of the alpha-synuclein gene showed a novel, nonconservative E46K mutation in heterozygosis The E46K mutation was present in all affected family members and in three young asymptomatic subjects, but it was absent in healthy and pathological controls The novel mutation, that substitutes a dicarboxylic amino acid, glutamic acid, with a basic amino acid such as lysine in a much conserved area of the protein, is likely to produce severe disturbance of protein function Our data show that, in addition to the previously described hereditary alpha-synucleinopathies, dementia with Lewy bodies is related to mutation of alpha-synuclein
2,607 citations
TL;DR: The cloning of a novel gene that contains missense mutations segregating with PARK8-linked PD in five families from England and Spain is described and this protein is named dardarin, derived from the Basque word dardara, meaning tremor, because of the tremor observed in PD.
2,259 citations
Cites background from "Mutations in the DJ-1 Gene Associat..."
..., 1998), 6 Unidad Experimental DJ-1 (Bonifati et al., 2003), and PINK1 (Valente et al....
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...…in genes encoding -synuclein Bethesda, Maryland 20892 (Polymeropoulos et al., 1997), parkin (Kitada et al., 1998),6 Unidad Experimental DJ-1 (Bonifati et al., 2003), and PINK1 (Valente et al.,7 Servicio de Neurologı́a 2004) has provided a basis for much of the ongoing Hospital Donostia…...
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...Mutations in the DJ-1 gene associated with autosomal recessive early-onset parkinsonism....
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...The dis35 Lincoln Drive covery of mutations in genes encoding -synuclein Bethesda, Maryland 20892 (Polymeropoulos et al., 1997), parkin (Kitada et al., 1998),6 Unidad Experimental DJ-1 (Bonifati et al., 2003), and PINK1 (Valente et al.,7 Servicio de Neurologı́a 2004) has provided a basis for much of the ongoing Hospital Donostia molecular work in the PD field and facilitates disease Paseo del Dr Begiristain, s/n modeling and the design and testing of targeted theraE20014 San Sebastián peutics....
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References
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TL;DR: The menu-driven operation of WHAT IF, combined with the use of default values wherever user input is required, makes it very easy to use for a novice user while keeping full flexibility for more sophisticated studies.
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TL;DR: All findings are applicable to automatic database searches and using intermediate sequences for finding links between more distant families was almost as successful: pairs were predicted to be homologous when the respective sequence families had proteins in common.
Abstract: Sequence alignments unambiguously distinguish between protein pairs of similar and non-similar structure when the pairwise sequence identity is high (>40% for long alignments). The signal gets blurred in the twilight zone of 20-35% sequence identity. Here, more than a million sequence alignments were analysed between protein pairs of known structures to re-define a line distinguishing between true and false positives for low levels of similarity. Four results stood out. (i) The transition from the safe zone of sequence alignment into the twilight zone is described by an explosion of false negatives. More than 95% of all pairs detected in the twilight zone had different structures. More precisely, above a cut-off roughly corresponding to 30% sequence identity, 90% of the pairs were homologous; below 25% less than 10% were. (ii) Whether or not sequence homology implied structural identity depended crucially on the alignment length. For example, if 10 residues were similar in an alignment of length 16 (>60%), structural similarity could not be inferred. (iii) The 'more similar than identical' rule (discarding all pairs for which percentage similarity was lower than percentage identity) reduced false positives significantly. (iv) Using intermediate sequences for finding links between more distant families was almost as successful: pairs were predicted to be homologous when the respective sequence families had proteins in common. All findings are applicable to automatic database searches.
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TL;DR: An all‐atom force field aimed at protein and nucleotide optimization in vacuo (NOVA), which has been specifically designed to avoid this problem and can be applied to modeling applications as well as X‐ray and NMR structure refinement.
Abstract: One of the conclusions drawn at the CASP4 meeting in Asilomar was that applying various force fields during refinement of template-based models tends to move predictions in the wrong direction, away from the experimentally determined coordinates. We have derived an all-atom force field aimed at protein and nucleotide optimization in vacuo (NOVA), which has been specifically designed to avoid this problem. NOVA resembles common molecular dynamics force fields but has been automatically parameterized with two major goals: (i) not to make high resolution X-ray structures worse and (ii) to improve homology models built by WHAT IF. Force-field parameters were not required to be physically correct; instead, they were optimized with random Monte Carlo moves in force-field parameter space, each one evaluated by simulated annealing runs of a 50-protein optimization set. Errors inherent to the approximate force-field equation could thus be canceled by errors in force-field parameters. Compared with the optimization set, the force field did equally well on an independent validation set and is shown to move in silico models closer to reality. It can be applied to modeling applications as well as X-ray and NMR structure refinement. A new method to assign force-field parameters based on molecular trees is also presented. A NOVA server is freely accessible at http://www.yasara.com/servers
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TL;DR: DJ-1 showed a cooperative transforming activity with H-Ras, more than 3 times as strong as the activity of ras/myc combination and is suggested to be a novel mitogen-dependent oncogene product involved in a Ras-related signal transduction pathway.
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