Huntington proteins and their nasty 'social network'
Thursday, February 27, 2014 - 12:31
in Health & Medicine
Researchers at the Buck Institute have identified and categorized thousands of protein interactions involving huntingtin, the protein responsible for Huntington's disease (HD). To use an analogy of a human social network, the identified proteins are like "friends" and "friends of friends" of the HD protein. The network provides an invaluable resource for identifying targets to treat the disease and has been used to implicate a particular signaling pathway involved in cell motility. HD is an incurable, fatal, inherited neurological disorder that causes severe degeneration of the nervous system.