Development of Nanoplatform in Prevention of the occurrence of Parkinson’s Disease of Old age

ELECTRONICS AND COMMUNICATION

The neurodegenerative illness of the brain known as Parkinson's disease (PD) affects those with Parkinson's. The brain has a number of structures known as lewy bodies. This project's objective was to investigate the feasibility of a novel protein nanocage system for the targeted capture of aberrant alpha-synuclein, with the goals of halting that protein's transmission between neurons and reducing the course of Parkinson's disease. Encapsulin protein nanocages will self-assemble in a selective manner around proteins that have been tagged with a specific encapsulation signal peptide (ESig), therefore encapsulating those proteins. Spectroscopic methods were used in order to explore the biophysical processes and physicochemical components that underlie encapsulin disintegration and reassembly. This was done in order to get a better understanding of the process. It was discovered that encapsulin undergoes a reversible disassembly under severe guanidine hydrochloride (4-7 M) and alkaline circumstances, and that it may then reassemble itself within 6-8 hours once the conditions return to normal. In order to properly collect untagged super folder green fluorescent protein, the conditions for encapsulin disintegration and reassembly were tuned and applied. These discoveries will assist advance towards capturing of the untagged pathogenic alpha-synuclein, as well as the possible future creation of a capture system that inhibits the evolution of Parkinson's disease in in vitro models.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.