Aberrant Ubiquitin in Alzheimer’s disease

 

Ubiquitine/proteasome system may have a role in degenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease.

To investigate in vivo this degradative machinery Dantuma’s group have developed a transgenic mouse model that carry a green fluorescent protein (GFP) reporter with a constitutively active degradation signal.

Lindsten et al. (A transgenic mouse model of the ubiquitin/proteasome system. Nature Biotechnol. 20, July 2003 – doi:10.1038/nbt851) confirmed the in vivo functionality of the reporter and found that its accumulation was induced in primary neurons by an aberrant ubiquitin previously described in Alzheimer’s disease.

 

BM&L-October 2003