Metazoan and microbial models of Niemann-Pick Type C disease

Niemann-Pick Type C (NP-C) disease compellingly provides insight into lipid transport and the association of this process with severe neuronal dysfunction. The two genes that define this syndrome, NPC1 and NPC2, are conserved throughout much of eukaryotic evolution, to the extent that the yeast and mammalian NPC1 genes are functionally interchangeable. We present here an evolutionary perspective of the genes defective in NP-C disease. We will describe how conservation of sequences and their biological roles in a variety of microbial and metazoan model systems may act as roadmaps to understanding this syndrome in humans.