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Science 13 July 2001:
Vol. 293. no. 5528, pp. 224 - 225
DOI: 10.1126/science.1063286
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Perspectives

NEUROSCIENCE:
Parkin and Its Substrates

Christian Haass and Philipp J. Kahle

What causes the selective degeneration of nigrostriatal dopaminergic neurons in the brains of Parkinson's disease patients? As Haass and Kahle explain in their Perspective, a clue comes from new work showing that two proteins implicated in PD (parkin and a-synuclein) normally interact in healthy neurons (Shimura et al.). The Perspective authors speculate that defective targeting of a-synuclein for degradation by parkin results in accumulation of toxic a-synuclein aggregates that selectively kill dopaminergic neurons.

The authors are in the Laboratory for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's Disease Research, Department of Biochemistry, Ludwig Maximilians University, 80336 Munich, Germany.

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