New research sheds light on common pathogenic mechanisms shared by Huntington's disease (HD) and HD-like disorders. The study, published by Cell Press in the May 12, 2011, issue of the journal Neuron, uses a new transgenic mouse model for an HD-like disorder to unravel complex molecular events that drive disease pathology.

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WORCESTER, Mass. – A single change to even one of the thousands of DNA codes that make up each gene in the human genome can result in severe diseases such as cancer, cystic fibrosis, muscular dystrophy or Huntington's Disease. A similarly minor change in the DNA of a virus or bacteria can give rise to drug resistant strains that are difficult for physicians to treat with standard drug therapies. For these reasons, scientists have long sought ways to study the effects genetic mutations can have on an organism but have been hampered in these efforts by an inability to easily and efficiently produce and analyze the thousands of potential changes possible in even one small gene.

A new study by scientists at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, published in Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences online on April 4, describes a novel technique to produce all potential individual mutations and using deep sequencing technology simultaneously analyze each change's impact on the cell.

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In Huntington's disease, the mutant protein known as huntingtin leads to the degeneration of a part of the brain known as the basal ganglia, causing the motor disturbances that represent one of the most defining features of the fatal disease. But a new study reported in the April issue of Cell Metabolism, a Cell Press publication, shows that the mutant protein also is responsible for metabolic imbalances in the hypothalamus, a brain region that plays an important role in appetite control.

"This helps to explain metabolic changes and increases in appetite that have been observed in people at the early stages of disease," even before any motor symptoms appear, said Åsa Petersén of Lund University in Sweden. "It should encourage us to do more clinical studies. If we really understand the pathways that are affected, it may lead to new targets for intervention."

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One bad apple is all it takes to spoil the barrel. And one misfolded protein may be all that's necessary to corrupt other proteins, forming large aggregations linked to several incurable neurodegenerative diseases such as Huntington's, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Stanford biology Professor Ron Kopito has shown that the mutant, misfolded protein responsible for Huntington's disease can move from cell to cell, recruiting normal proteins and forming aggregations in each cell it visits.

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