Volume 40, Issue 7 pp. 612-618

Quality control of the proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases

Xuechao Gao

Xuechao Gao

State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China

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Hongyu Hu

Corresponding Author

Hongyu Hu

State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Institute of Biochemistry and Cell Biology, Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031, China

*Corresponding author: Tel, 86-21-54921121; Fax, 86-21-54921011; E-mail, [email protected]Search for more papers by this author
First published: 16 July 2008
Citations: 7

This work was supported by a grant from the National Basic Research Program of China (2006CB910305)

Abstract

Most neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease and other polyglutamine diseases are associated with degeneration and death of specific neuronal populations due to misfolding or aggregation of certain proteins. These aggregates often contain ubiquitin that is the signal for proteolysis by the ubiquitin-proteasome system, and chaperone proteins that are involved in the assistance of protein folding. Here we review the role of protein quality control systems in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative diseases, and aim to learn more from the cooperation between molecular chaperones and ubiquitin-proteasome system responding to cellular protein aggregates, in order to find molecular targets for therapeutic intervention.

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