The Journal of Neuroscience recently featured a debate over the hypothesis that Parkinson's disease is, at least in some cases, caused by a prion-like mechanism - misfolded proteins that spread from neuron to neuron. A prion is a protein that has taken on an abnormal shape and that can spread itself by making other, healthy molecules of the same protein adopt its abnormal configuration. The best-known prion disease is variant CJD aka "mad cow disease", but some researchers believe that Parkinson's is also a prion-like disorder. The evidence is reviewed by Patrik Brundin and Ronald Melki in
a Journal of Neuroscience paper
. In an accompanying article, Surmeier et al. put the case that the prion theory can't explain everything about Parkinson's. The journal call this debate format 'Dual Perspectives'. Brundin and Melki argue that there is good evidence suggesting that a protein called alpha-synuclein (α-SYN) can become prion-like, and ...
