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Updated: Aug 12, 2026

Sequential Extraction of Soluble and Insoluble Alpha-Synuclein from Parkinsonian Brains
Published on: January 5, 2016
Challenges and complexities of alpha-synuclein toxicity: new postulates in unfolding the mystery associated with
Muralidhar L Hegde1, K S Jagannatha Rao
1Department of Biochemistry and Nutrition, Central Food Technological Research Institute, 570013, Mysore, India.
Abstract:
The discovery of two missense mutations in alpha-synuclein gene and the identification of the alpha-synuclein as the major component of Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites have imparted a new direction in understanding Parkinson's disease. Now that alpha-synuclein has been implicated in several neurodegenerative disorders makes it increasingly clear that aggregation of alpha-synuclein is a hallmark feature in neurodegeneration. Although little has been learned about its normal function, alpha-synuclein appears to be associated with membrane phospholipids and may therefore participate in a number of cell signaling pathways. Here, we review the localization, structure, and function of alpha-synuclein and provide a new hypothesis on, (a) the disruption in the membrane binding ability of synuclein which may be the major culprit leading to the alpha-synuclein aggregation and (b) the complexity associated with nuclear localization of alpha-synuclein and its possible binding property to DNA. Further, we postulated the three possible mechanisms of synuclein induced neuronal degeneration in Parkinson's disease.
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