Gulf War Veterans are more prone to neurodegeneration, presumably due to a combination of toxins to which they were exposed together with stress. The hypothesis of the project was that these toxins might adversely affect the transport of subcellular elements called microtubules within the nerves, and that potential therapies could be developed accordingly. The one year of work did not resolve the issue, but progress was made toward refining the ...
Spastin and P60-katanin are two distinct microtubule-severing proteins. Autosomal dominant mutations in the SPG4 locus corresponding to spastin are the most common cause of hereditary spastic paraplegia (HSP), a neurodegenerative disease that afflicts the adult corticospinal tracts. Here we sought to evaluate whether SPG4-based HSP is best understood as a loss-of-function disease. Using various rat tissues, we found that P60-katanin levels are much higher than spastin levels during development. In ...
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