There is much interest at the moment in the role of alpha-synuclein in the pathogenesis of PD. I thought it would be interesting to go through my posts, most of which were based on epidemiological evidence, and see if there were any evidence of an involvement of alpha-synuclein.

Munishkina et al. [1] write:
"Certain metals lead to increased risk of Parkinson’s disease (PD) and the aggregation of α-synuclein is implicated in the PD pathology. Although α-synuclein fibrillation has been extensively studied in dilute solutions in vitro, the intracellular environment is highly crowded. We are showing here that certain metals cause a significant acceleration of α-synuclein fibrillation in the presence of high concentrations of various macromolecules mostly through decreasing the fibrillation lagtime. The faster fibrillation in crowded environments in the presence of heavy metals suggests a simple molecular basis for the observed elevated risk of PD due to exposure to metals."

Tag johnt:alpha-synuclein

References:

[1] "CONCERTED ACTION OF METALS AND MACROMOLECULAR CROWDING ON THE FIBRILLATION OF α-SYNUCLEIN"
Larissa A. Munishkina, Anthony L. Fink, and Vladimir N. Uversky
Protein Pept Lett. 2008
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2677187/

John