Abstract

STRUCTURE PREDICTION OF ALPHA-SYNUCLEIN PROTEIN: LINK BETWEEN NEURODEGENERATIVE DISEASES

Rashmika Singh, Navin K. Gaur, *Ankur Mohan, Pallavi Gangwar

ABSTRACT

Neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD) and Alzheimer’s disease (AD), are a group of pathologies characterized by a progressive and specific loss of certain brain areas. The pathogenesis of these disorders centrally involves abnormal accumulation and aggregation of specific proteins. Pathological studies showed that Alpha-synuclein protein is responsible for formation of intraneuronal Lewy bodies and Lewy neuritis (hallmarks of PD) while others proteins like tau and beta amyloid form extracellular β-amyloid deposits and intracellular neurofibrillary tangles (hallmarks of AD). However evidences from in vitro and in vivo studies showed that these proteins are responsible for each other’s aggregation with different seeding abilities. This idea is taken further to develop a common therapeutic treatment for both the diseases by targeting alpha synuclein pathologies involved in both of them. Since the precise structure of alpha synuclein protein is not yet available. Therefore, a theoretical model of this protein was generated using homology Modeling. Validation of structure was done by using PROCHECK available at SAVES server.

Keywords: Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, SNCA, Homology Modeling, SAVES.