Huntington Disease Essay

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MUTANT HUNTINGTIN PROTEIN AGGREGATION AND PROTEASOMAL DISFUNCTION AN INSILICO STUDY 1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Huntingtons Disease Huntington’s disease (HD) is a progressive autosomal dominant neurodegenerative genetic disorder. HD was originally named Huntington’s chorea after Dr.George Huntington, an American physician who first gave a detailed note on the symptoms and course of the disease in 1872.Recently the name has been changed to Huntington’s disease to emphasize the fact that chorea is not the only important manifestation of the disease but several non-motor symptoms are also associated with this disease.[1] 1 in 1000 to 1 in 10,000 peoples around the world and, 4-10 per 100000 in the western countries are affected with HD. The average age of onset is 40 years and disease progresses over 15-20 years. The earliest symptoms include general lack of co-ordination, uncontrollable jerky movements called chorea and slow saccadic eye movements. As the disease progresses cognitive abilities are declined and finally leading to dementia along with behavioural and psychiatric problems [3] In 1993 a consortium of researchers who worked on the DNA samples from families in the Lake Maracaibo region of Venezuela, an area with a high density of HD and significant consanguinity, reported the successful discovery of the gene responsible for the occurrence of this disease, present in chromosome 4 and named it as IT15 (Interesting transcript #15). IT15 later called as the Huntingtin gene (HTT) [2]. HTT is ~10 kilobases (kb) long and translated into a protein of 3144 amino acids with anticipated molecular mass of 348 kDa. Huntigtin protein is expressed in in human and all mammalian cells, where brain and testis has the highest concentration; liver... ... middle of paper ... ...xpressed in diseased neurons. Hence the increased aggregation leads to the further deterioration in UPS function. The abrupt loss of neuronal function that is characterized in the progression of many neurodegenerative diseases including huntingtons disease can be explained by this positive feedback mechanism. OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY 1. Modelling the mHTT structure containing beta hairpins 2. Modelling the beta subunit of 20S proteasome 3. Perform the docking studies of proteasome with normal huntingtin protein, mutated huntingtin protein as well as mutated huntingtin oligomer 4. compare the basic interactions present in proteasome-HTT, proteasome-mHTT, and proteasome-mHTT oligomer complexes Henceforth we could possibly answer how the mHTT escapes the proteasome from degradation and how the oligomeric form of escaped mHTT impairs the Proteasomal function.

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