Studying the Effect of Alpha-Synuclein and Parkinson's Disease Linked Mutants on Inter Pathway Connectivities

Abstract Parkinson's Disease is a common neurodegenerative disease. The differential expression of alpha-synuclein within Lewy Bodies leads to this disease. Some missense mutations of alpha-synuclein may resultant in functional aberrations. In this study, our objective is to verify the functional adaptation due to early and late-onset mutation which can trigger or control the rate of alpha-synuclein aggregation. In this regard, we have proposed a computational model to study the difference and/or similarities among the Wild type alpha-synuclein and two mutations G51D and E46K which are responsible for slow and fast aggregation respectively. Evolutionary sequence space analysis is also performed in this experiment. Subsequently, a comparative study has been performed between structural information and sequence space outcomes. The study shows the structural variability among the selected subtypes. This information assists inter pathway modeling due to mutational aberrations. Based on the structural variability, we have identified the protein-protein interaction partners for each protein that helps to increase the robustness of the inter-pathway connectivity. As per the inter-pathway networks, drug addiction has clear impacts on both the mutations i.e., G51D-slow, and E46K-fast and can be considered as the reason for early-onset Parkinson’s Disease. Finally, three top pathways associated with drug addiction viz., Amphetamine addiction, alcoholism, and Cocaine addiction show the higher influence in the mutated pathway networks based on the PageRank Algorithm where Dopaminergic Synapse system is also found within the same list in terms of Parkinson’s Disease pathogenicity.

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Studying the effect of alpha-synuclein and Parkinson’s disease linked mutants on inter pathway connectivities

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-95889-5 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Sagnik Sen ◽

Ashmita Dey ◽

Ujjwal Maulik

Keyword(s):

Parkinson’S Disease ◽

Parkinson's Disease ◽

Sequence Space ◽

Late Onset ◽

Structural Information ◽

Semantic Networks ◽

Alpha Synuclein ◽

Functional Adaptation ◽

Missense Mutations ◽

Structural Variability

AbstractParkinson’s disease is a common neurodegenerative disease. The differential expression of alpha-synuclein within Lewy Bodies leads to this disease. Some missense mutations of alpha-synuclein may resultant in functional aberrations. In this study, our objective is to verify the functional adaptation due to early and late-onset mutation which can trigger or control the rate of alpha-synuclein aggregation. In this regard, we have proposed a computational model to study the difference and similarities among the Wild type alpha-synuclein and mutants i.e., A30P, A53T, G51D, E46K, and H50Q. Evolutionary sequence space analysis is also performed in this experiment. Subsequently, a comparative study has been performed between structural information and sequence space outcomes. The study shows the structural variability among the selected subtypes. This information assists inter pathway modeling due to mutational aberrations. Based on the structural variability, we have identified the protein–protein interaction partners for each protein that helps to increase the robustness of the inter-pathway connectivity. Finally, few pathways have been identified from 12 semantic networks based on their association with mitochondrial dysfunction and dopaminergic pathways.

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Alterations of Erythrocytic Phosphorylated Alpha-Synuclein in Different Subtypes and Stages of Parkinson's Disease

Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience ◽

10.3389/fnagi.2021.623977 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 ◽

Author(s):

Xu-Ying Li ◽

Wei Li ◽

Xin Li ◽

Xu-Ran Li ◽

Linjuan Sun ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Parkinson’S Disease ◽

Parkinson's Disease ◽

Disease Duration ◽

Late Onset ◽

Area Under The Curve ◽

Alpha Synuclein ◽

Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay ◽

Healthy Controls ◽

Olfactory Loss ◽

Potential Biomarker

Serine 129-phosphorylated alpha-synuclein (pS-α-syn) is a major form of α-syn relevant to the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD), which has been recently detected in red blood cells (RBCs). However, alterations of RBC-derived pS-α-syn (pS-α-syn-RBC) in different subtypes and stages of PD remains to be investigated. In the present study, by using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) to measure pS-α-syn-RBC, we demonstrated significantly higher levels of pS-α-syn-RBC in PD patients than in healthy controls. pS-α-syn-RBC separated the patients well from the controls, with a sensitivity of 93.39% (95% CI: 90.17–95.81%), a specificity of 93.11% (95% CI: 89.85–95.58%), and an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.96. Considering motor subtypes, the levels of pS-α-syn-RBC were significantly higher in late-onset than young-onset PD (p = 0.013) and in those with postural instability and gait difficulty than with tremor-dominant (TD) phenotype (p = 0.029). In addition, the levels of pS-α-syn-RBC were also different in non-motor subtypes, which were significantly lower in patients with cognitive impairment (p = 0.012) and olfactory loss (p = 0.004) than in those without such symptoms. Moreover, the levels of pS-α-syn-RBC in PD patients were positively correlated with disease duration and Hoehn & Yahr stages (H&Y) (p for trend =0.02 and <0.001) as well as UPDRS III (R2 = 0.031, p = 0.0042) and MoCA scores (R2 = 0.048, p = 0.0004). The results obtained suggest that pS-α-syn-RBC can be used as a potential biomarker for not only separating PD patients from healthy controls but also predicting the subtypes and stages of PD.

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Integration of functional genomics data to uncover cell type-specific pathways affected in Parkinson's disease

Biochemical Society Transactions ◽

10.1042/bst20210128 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Viola Volpato

Keyword(s):

Parkinson’S Disease ◽

Parkinson's Disease ◽

Neurodegenerative Disorder ◽

Disease Risk ◽

Late Onset ◽

Alpha Synuclein ◽

Biological Information ◽

Cell Type ◽

Risk Variants ◽

Cell Type Specific

Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most prevalent late-onset neurodegenerative disorder worldwide after Alzheimer's disease for which available drugs only deliver temporary symptomatic relief. Loss of dopaminergic neurons (DaNs) in the substantia nigra and intracellular alpha-synuclein inclusions are the main hallmarks of the disease but the events that cause this degeneration remain uncertain. Despite cell types other than DaNs such as astrocytes, microglia and oligodendrocytes have been recently associated with the pathogenesis of PD, we still lack an in-depth characterisation of PD-affected brain regions at cell-type resolution that could help our understanding of the disease mechanisms. Nevertheless, publicly available large-scale brain-specific genomic, transcriptomic and epigenomic datasets can be further exploited to extract different layers of cell type-specific biological information for the reconstruction of cell type-specific transcriptional regulatory networks. By intersecting disease risk variants within the networks, it may be possible to study the functional role of these risk variants and their combined effects at cell type- and pathway levels, that, in turn, can facilitate the identification of key regulators involved in disease progression, which are often potential therapeutic targets.

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