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Nature 441, 1058 (29 June 2006) | doi:10.1038/4411058a; Published online 28 June 2006

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Neurodegenerative disease: Pink, parkin and the brain

Leo Pallanck1 & J. Timothy Greenamyre2

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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.

Parkinson's disease was first described1 in 1817, but our understanding of what causes the neurodegeneration that underlies its devastating symptoms is still rudimentary. Such poor understanding hinders the development of therapies, which currently don't seem to modify disease progression, even if they can mitigate for a time some of the movement difficulties that characterize this condition.

  1. Leo Pallanck is in the Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.
    Email: pallancku.washington.edu
  2. J. Timothy Greenamyre is at the Pittsburgh Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases and the Department of Neurology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA.

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