Autophagic pathways and parkinson disease

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014. All rights reserved. Autophagy is responsible for the degradation and recycling of intracellular material including organelles, cytosolic proteins, and accumulated misfolded proteins. Increasing evidence implicates autophagy dysfunction in several neurodegenerative disorders including Parkinson's disease (PD). In this chapter, we analyze recent studies that provide new links between genes associated to PD and the autophagy process. Mutations in PD-associated proteins like a-synuclein, parkin, PINK1, LRRK2, DJ-1, UCH-L1, ATP12A3, and GBA have been recently directly or indirectly linked to alterations in the autophagic system, thereby contributing to the understanding of the role of this system in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease.