The DOI matches its Crossref record; 24 of the 24 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
α-Synuclein occurs physiologically as a helically folded tetramer that resists aggregation
Open accessAbstract
Parkinson's disease is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder. Growing evidence indicates a causative role of misfolded forms of the protein α-synuclein in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease. Intraneuronal aggregates of α-synuclein occur in Lewy bodies and Lewy neurites, the cytopathological hallmarks of Parkinson's disease and related disorders called synucleinopathies. α-Synuclein has long been defined as a 'natively unfolded' monomer of about 14 kDa (ref. 6) that is believed to acquire α-helical secondary structure only upon binding to lipid vesicles. This concept derives from the widespread use of recombinant bacterial expression protocols for in vitro studies, and of overexpression, sample heating and/or denaturing gels for cell culture and tissue studies. In contrast, we report that endogenous α-synuclein isolated and analysed under non-denaturing conditions from neuronal and non-neuronal cell lines, brain tissue and living human cells occurs in large part as a folded tetramer of about 58 kDa. Several methods, including analytical ultracentrifugation, scanning transmission electron microscopy and in vitro cell crosslinking confirmed the occurrence of the tetramer. Native, cell-derived α-synuclein showed α-helical structure without lipid addition and had much greater lipid-binding capacity than the recombinant α-synuclein studied heretofore. Whereas recombinantly expressed monomers readily aggregated into amyloid-like fibrils in vitro, native human tetramers underwent little or no amyloid-like aggregation. On the basis of these findings, we propose that destabilization of the helically folded tetramer precedes α-synuclein misfolding and aggregation in Parkinson's disease and other human synucleinopathies, and that small molecules that stabilize the physiological tetramer could reduce α-synuclein pathogenicity.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
In the citing paper
“in human brain lysates, human neuronal cultures, mouse models, and in mouse/human/goat cell lines expressing familial PD αSyn mutations (A53T or E46K), a decrease in the tetramer:monomer ratio correlated to increased neurotoxicity”
From α-synuclein in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (2019) · cites this paper as [136]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
Spillantini, M. G., Schmidt, M. L., Lee, V. M.-Y., Trojanowski, J. Q., Jakes, R., & Goedert, M. (1997) · Nature · doi:10.1038/42166 · Cited by 8,382
Microdetermination of Phosphorus
Chen, P. S., Toribara, T. Y., & Warner, H. R. (1956) · Analytical Chemistry · doi:10.1021/ac60119a033 · Cited by 7,200
Chen, Y., Yang, J. T., & Martínez, H. M. (1972) · Biochemistry · doi:10.1021/bi00772a015 · Cited by 1,958
Stabilization of α-Synuclein Secondary Structure upon Binding to Synthetic Membranes
Davidson, W. S., Jonas, A., Clayton, D. F., & George, J. M. (1998) · Journal of Biological Chemistry · doi:10.1074/jbc.273.16.9443 · Cited by 1,622
NACP, A Protein Implicated in Alzheimer's Disease and Learning, Is Natively Unfolded
Weinreb, P. H., Zhen, W., Poon, A. W., Conway, K. A., & Lansbury, P. T. (1996) · Biochemistry · doi:10.1021/bi961799n · Cited by 1,524
Missing pieces in the Parkinson's disease puzzle
Obeso, J. A., Rodríguez-Oroz, M. C., Goetz, C. G., Marin, C. A., Kordower, J. H., Rodrı́guez, M., Hirsch, É. C., Farrer, M. J., Schapira, A. H. V., & Halliday, G. M. (2010) · Nature Medicine · doi:10.1038/nm.2165 · Cited by 776
A century-old debate on protein aggregation and neurodegeneration enters the clinic
Lansbury, P. T., & Lashuel, H. A. (2006) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature05290 · Cited by 691
The two faces of protein misfolding: gain‐ and loss‐of‐function in neurodegenerative diseases
Winklhofer, K. F., Tatzelt, J., & Haass, C. (2008) · The EMBO Journal · doi:10.1038/sj.emboj.7601930 · Cited by 410
Sharon, R., Goldberg, M. S., Bar-Josef, I., Betensky, R. A., Shen, J., & Selkoe, D. J. (2001) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.171300598 · Cited by 340
Self-citationGATA transcription factors directly regulate the Parkinson's disease-linked gene α-synuclein
Scherzer, C. R., Grass, J. A., Liao, Z., Pepivani, I., Zheng, B., Eklund, A. C., Ney, P. A., Ng, J., McGoldrick, M., Mollenhauer, B., et al. (2008) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.0802437105 · Cited by 271
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The many faces of α-synuclein: from structure and toxicity to therapeutic target
Lashuel, H. A., Overk, C., Oueslati, A., & Masliah, E. (2012) · Nature reviews. Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn3406 · Cited by 1,684
“Although Bartels et al.(126) reported that chemical crosslinking of native α‐syn primarily stabilized α‐syn tetramers, studies by several groups, including the work by Wang et al.”
Resultα-synuclein toxicity in neurodegeneration: mechanism and therapeutic strategies
Wong, Y. C., & Krainc, D. (2017) · Nature Medicine · doi:10.1038/nm.4269 · Cited by 897
Bendor, J. T., Logan, T. P., & Edwards, R. H. (2013) · Neuron · doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2013.09.004 · Cited by 825
α‐Synuclein aggregation nucleates through liquid‐liquid phase separation
Ray, S., Singh, N., Kumar, R., Patel, K., Pandey, S., Datta, D., Mahato, J., Panigrahi, R., Navalkar, A., Mehra, S., et al. (2020) · Nature Chemistry · doi:10.1038/s41557-020-0465-9 · Cited by 863
Structural disorder of monomeric α-synuclein persists in mammalian cells
Theillet, F., Binolfi, A., Bekei, B., Martorana, A., Rose, H. M., Stuiver, M., Verzini, S., Lorenz, D., van Rossum, M., Goldfarb, D., et al. (2016) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature16531 · Cited by 895
Metadata
- Authors
- Bartels, T., Choi, J. G., & Selkoe, D. J.
- Affiliations
- Brigham and Women's Hospital (US)
- Corresponding author
- Selkoe, Dennis J.
- Venue
- Nature
- Published
- 2011-08-14
- Volume
- 477
- Issue
- 7362
- Pages
- 107-110
- ISSN
- 0028-0836 (ISSN-L)
- 1476-4687
- PMC
- PMC3166366
- OpenAlex
- W2026717532
- Cited by
- 1,263
- References
- 24
- Citations by year
- 2026: 48 · 2025: 71 · 2024: 81 · 2023: 65 · 2022: 93 · 2021: 81 · 2020: 89 · 2019: 96 · 2018: 83 · 2017: 98 · 2016: 79 · 2015: 83 · 2014: 86 · 2013: 95 · 2012: 99
- FWCI
- 59.92
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Nature (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (R01NS051318, P50NS038375, NS051318, NS038375)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Clinical Neurology › Parkinson's Disease Mechanisms and Treatments
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience › Alzheimer's disease research and treatments
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Neurology › Neuroinflammation and Neurodegeneration Mechanisms
- Keywords
- alpha-synuclein, protein aggregation, Parkinson's disease, synucleinopathies, intrinsically disordered proteins, lipid binding, amyloid-like fibrils, tetramer stabilization, Lewy bodies, protein misfolding, neurodegeneration, brain tissue, neuronal cell lines
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Chlorocebus aethiops, Erythrocytes, Escherichia coli, HeLa Cells, Humans, Recombinant Proteins, Time Factors, Blotting, Western, Protein Folding, COS Cells, Cell Line, Tumor, Lipid Metabolism, Mice, alpha-Synuclein, HEK293 Cells
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
