DJ-1 and hexokinases

National Institute On Aging

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Abstract

We have been interested in the relationship between oxidative stress and DJ-1, a rare cause of recessive Parkinson's disease, for several years and have focussed the relationship between oxidative stress and mitochondrial localization. We have been focussed on developing new resources for these experiments including recent reporting of IPSC cell lines from rare DJ-1 case and an engineered line with the same mutation and isogenic control. To date, we have characterized the general ability of these lines to support differentiation into target cell types and have confirmed the lack of DJ-1. We used these lines, as well as other knockout models, to evaluate a current hypothesis that DJ-1 plays an important role in detoxification of glycated macromolecules. While we saw a minor increase in cells without DJ-1, or in vivo, we did not see major effects as would be expected if DJ-1 played a substantial role in deglycation. Combined with biochemical data, our work suggests that DJ-1 plays a different, and as yet poorly defined, role in cellular metabolism.