Author(s): Paul Whitesman
In an attempt to create a model of Parkinson’s disease (PD) eighty-three proteins were extracted from the Swiss- Prot protein database that had some casual mention of PD. These were split up into various subsets of proteins of which three are focused on here: PARK, made up of proteins that had some indication that polymorphisms in the protein might increase a person’s susceptibility to develop PD; MITOCHOND, proteins which had some association with the mitochondria; and MT-C1D, proteins that were implicated in mitochondrial complex 1 deficiency. The PARK subset had 21 out of 83 proteins (21/83); MITOCHOND 33 out of 83 proteins (33/83); and MT-C1D 17 out of 83 proteins (17/83). The results could be used to build up a basic model of PD creating phenotypes based on sets of proteins. The main phenotypes established here are; non-mitochondrial PD (50/83) and mitochondrial PD (33/83). Further division is possible dependant on whether proteins have polymorphisms which increase susceptibility to develop PD. MT-C1D seems to be independent of the PARK set. This is a very simplistic attempt at trying to model Parkinson’s disease at the proteomic level and will need further work to build up the more complex and realistic PD proteomic disease model.
