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Originally Posted by zanpar321
I wonder when the alpha synuclein gets put into the red blood cells? Perhaps in the bone marrow where red blood cells are created. It seems like if they could be somehow prevented from being formed, PD patients would have fewer symptoms and PD may even reverse! Or could a filter be made to remove the alpha synuclein from the red blood cells?
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I think that you are right - the alpha-synuclein gene probably gets switched on in the bone marrow stem cells which lead to formation of red blood cells and so alpha-synuclein protein ends off inside red blood cells. What (if anything) the function of alpha-synuclein protein is in those cells seems to be unknown. I doubt that alpha-synuclein protein can "escape" from red blood cells.
However, there are a couple of papers which may provide food for thought.
One looked at red blood cells in mice which had had their alpha-synuclein gene removed ("knocked-out"). Their red blood cells were fine but they had lower levels of markers of oxidative stress than the red blood cells of mice in which the alpha-synuclein gene was present;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25043722 .
The other one showed that, in the MPTP mouse model of PD, the knock-out mice had higher levels of striatal dopamine compared to mice in which the alpha-synuclein gene was present;
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15288507 .