Shining a Light on Protein Aggregation in Parkinson’s Disease; Optobiological Control of Key Protein (Alpha-Synuclein) May Reveal Earliest Stages of Neurodegeneration in Mice

A novel system to control protein aggregation in a model of Parkinson’s disease may answer longstanding questions about how the disease begins and spreads, according to a new study published online on March 9, 2022, in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Abid Oueslati, PhD, of Laval University, Quebec, Canada, and colleagues. Initial results suggest that aggregation of the protein alpha-synuclein plays a critical role in disrupting neuronal homeostasis and triggering neurodegeneration. The article is titled “A Light-Inducible Protein Clustering System for in Vivo Analysis of α-Synuclein Aggregation in Parkinson Disease.”