Nordic Life Science 1
Turku Bioscience Centre at the University of Turk
u and Åbo Akademi University in Finland have shown that a specific protein kinase is hyperactive in skin samples from Parkinson’s disease patients and leads to a decrease in protein synthesis. This new finding, published in the FASEB Journal, could help accelerate the development of better treatments for Parkinson’s disease. In the study, the researchers found that in skin cells obtained from the forearm of Parkinson’s patients, translation of RNA into protein was reduced compared to cells 74 from healthy donors of a similar age. The reason for this was an enzyme called LRRK2, which was more active in the Parkinson’s patients’ cells. LRRK2 is the most commonly mutated gene in Parkinson’s disease but the exact mechanism is not yet known. The scientists added LRRK2-inhibitor drugs to the patient samples and found that the synthesis of new proteins returned to control levels. Then they used the pesticide rotenone, exposure to which induces Parkinson’s like symptoms in humans, to model Parkinson’s disease in rodent brain cells. Rotenone repressed protein synthesis and caused the axons of dopamine-producing nerve cells, which also die in Parkinson’s, // No 04 2020