Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2010 Jul;44(3):223-32.
doi: 10.1016/j.mcn.2010.03.009. Epub 2010 Mar 27.

Persephin signaling through GFRalpha1: the potential for the treatment of Parkinson's disease

Affiliations

Persephin signaling through GFRalpha1: the potential for the treatment of Parkinson's disease

Yulia A Sidorova et al. Mol Cell Neurosci. 2010 Jul.

Abstract

Neurotrophic factors promote survival, proliferation and differentiation of neurons inducing intracellular signaling via specific receptors. The conventional biochemical methods often fail to reveal full repertoire of neurotrophic factor-receptor interactions because of their limited sensitivity. We evaluated several approaches to study signaling of Glial cell line-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (GDNF) family ligands and found that reporter-gene systems possess exceptionally high sensitivity and a heuristic power to identify novel biologically relevant growth factor-receptor interactions. We identified persephin, a GDNF family member, as a novel ligand for GFRalpha1/RET receptor complex. We confirmed this finding by several independent methods, including neurite outgrowth assay from the explants of sympathetic ganglia expressing Gfralpha1 and Ret mRNA but not persephin's conventional receptor GFRalpha4. As the activation of GFRalpha1/RET was shown to rescue dopaminergic neurons, our results suggest the potential of persephin for the treatment of Parkinson's disease.

PubMed Disclaimer

Publication types

MeSH terms

Substances