Stanford researchers have found an answer to a long-standing mystery surrounding Huntington's, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and other neurodegenerative diseases.
Healthy cells have the ability to break down and eliminate unwanted proteins.
It gets rid of abnormal proteins, and it breaks down and recycles regulatory proteins no longer needed by the cell. Human cells contain thousands of proteins, each with a unique three-dimensional shape determined by specific genes. A slight genetic mutation may cause huntingtin proteins to fold incorrectly and accumulate inside the nerve. Defective huntingtin aggregates are common in patients with Huntington's disease. But in some diseases, the ubiquitin-proteasome system breaks down.