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The Pathophysiology Of Huntington's Disease

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Researches about Huntington’s disease (HD) revealed that it is caused by an expanded CAG trinucleotide repeat in HTT, the gene responsible for expressing the protein huntingtin. It was also revealed that the reduced expression of this protein leads to the neurodegenerative effects of the disease. However, the pathophysiology of the disease is still unknown. This paper investigated the pathophysiology of Huntington’s disease. This paper is based upon the toxic peptide theory of the disease pathogenesis. This theory believed that a mutant HD undergoes caspase cleavage or other proteolytic activities that produced truncated N-terminal fragments of the trinucleotide (CAG)n repeat. The fragments may accumulate in the nucleus and cytoplasm leading to the induction of toxicity by sequestering important cellular targets. This hypothesis led to two predictions: (1) the N-terminal fragments should be present in the brain of the diseased; and (2) the fragments should selectively accumulate in caudate and cerebral cortex part of the brain. To investigate the proteolytic cleavage of the mutant HD in the brain, the researchers determined the proteolytic cleavage products of the mutant HD. This was done by identifying the size of HD in the diseased tissue and evaluated HD from an affected region, i.e. caudate and putamen, of the human brain. The aggregation state of the HD-containing complex was measured using gel filtration while the size was measured by SDS-PAGE followed by antibody d

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