Baird lab has recently published important findings on Parkinson's disease related protein a-synuclein in npj Parkinson's disease journal. A-syn has been the subject of intense research with the aim of understanding the relationship between a-syn physiological function and PD pathology, but this connection remains poorly understood at the cellular level.
To overcome severe experimental limitations associated with brain tissue, the group developed a cultured cell system to examine effects of human a-syn on stimulated secretion of intracellular vesicles. They systematically examined wildtype a-syn in comparison to PD-associated mutants and other structural mutants and evaluated individual cells for secretory activities using quantitative fluorescence microscopy. Their results highlight the importance of specific structural features of a-syn in regulating vesicle release, and point to a potential role for a-syn in perturbing mitochondrial function under pathological conditions.
