Identification of Splice Variants as Molecular Markers in Parkinson's Disease

摘要

Alternative splicing is responsible for producing several products from a single transcript and can cause pathogenic changes in RNA in neurodegenerative disease. This proposal tests the hypothesis that regulation of normal splicing is disrupted in Parkinson's disease (PD). Scope: Experiments determined splicing products in the brain and blood of experimental MPTP models of PD. The overall goal was to use splice variants as biomarkers to identify individuals at risk for PD. To date we have identified and quantified alternatively spliced transcripts for several candidate genes in MPTP models of PD. We also had lRB permission (for only 9 months) to study splicing factors in the blood of PD patients.