Recessive parkinsonism and mitochondrial function

National Institute On Aging

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Abstract

A few years ago, we found that the enzyme hexokinase controlled recruitment of parkin, an E3 ligase associated with recessive Parkinson's disease (PD), to mitochondrial. This work implicated Akt, which is also thought to be important in aging, in cellular signaling pathways relevant for Parkinson's disease and suggests that kinase signaling in general might be important for PD. It is known that PINK1, a mitochondrial kinase that can also be mutated in recessive PD, also controls parkin recruitment. We have also found that cells deficient in PINK1 or DJ-1, another recessive PD gene, have changes in mitochondrial motility in axon-like extrusions of cells. Our current focus is on developing new models to see if these observations in cells are also seen in vivo.