The Parkinson’s disease-associated protein α-synuclein disrupts stress signaling – a possible implication for methamphetamine use?
Authors:Shaoxiao Wang1 and Stephan N. Witt1,2
1 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, USA.
2 Department of Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Neuroscience, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center, USA.
Keywords:
α-synuclein, methamphetamine, Parkinson’s disease, polo-like kinase, signaling.
Related Article(s)?
Wang S, Xu B, Liou L, Ren Q, Huang S, Luo Y, Zhang Z, Witt S (2012). α-Synuclein disrupts stress signaling by inhibiting polo-like kinase Cdc5/Plk2. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 109: 16119–16124. , 10.1073/pnas.1206286109
Corresponding Author(s):
Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Please cite this article as:
Shaoxiao Wang and Stephan N. Witt (2014). The Parkinson’s disease-associated protein α-synuclein disrupts stress signaling – a possible implication for methamphetamine use? Microbial Cell 1(4): 131-132.
© 2014 Wang and Witt. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
The human neuronal protein α-synuclein (α-syn) has been linked by a plethora of studies as a causative factor in sporadic Parkinson’s disease (PD). To speed the pace of discovery about the biology and pathobiology of α-syn, organisms such as yeast, worms, and flies have been used to investigate the mechanisms by which elevated levels of α-syn are toxic to cells and to screen for drugs and genes that suppress this toxicity. We recently reported [Wang et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. (2012) 109: 16119–16124] that human α-syn, at high expression levels, disrupts stress-activated signal transduction pathways in both yeast and human neuroblastoma cells. Disruption of these signaling pathways ultimately leads to vulnerability to stress and to cell death. Here we discuss how the disruption of cell signaling by α-syn may have relevance to the parkinsonism that is associated with the abuse of the drug methamphetamine (meth).
doi: 10.15698/mic2014.04.137
Volume 1, pp. 131 to 132, published 31/03/2014.