Yeast genetics targets lipids in Parkinson's disease

Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative illness that affects five million people worldwide and no treatments are available to stop its relentless progression. Recently, a yeast model carrying human disease-linked a-synuclein transgenes was engineered. Genome-wide screening of 4850 gene-deletion strains identified 86 enhancers of at-synuclein toxicity. Surprisingly, the two largest groups of disease-modifying genes were involved in the related processes of lipid metabolism and vesicle-mediated transport. In this article, we discuss the implications of these findings for Parkinson's disease.