NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASE: Pink, parkin and the brain

Pallanck, Leo
Greenamyre, J. Timothy

Leo Pallanck is in the Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. J. Timothy Greenamyre is at the Pittsburgh Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and the Department of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA. e-mail: [email protected]

Nature 441(7097):p 1058, June 29, 2006.

Dysfunctions in a number of cellular pathways can cause Parkinson's disease. Fruitflies with mutations in a protein called PINK1 show that there might be some unsuspected interplay between two such pathways.