PINK1 is a protein serine/threonine kinase (PTK) that protects the organelles from cellular stress and controls selective autophagy to clear damage. Exner, et. al. were among the first to report that PINK1 deficiency in humans was linked to autosomal recessive occurrences of Parkinson's disease (PD) and neurogenerative pathology (1). They employed RNA interference-mediated down regulation of PINK1 and PINK1 antibody to show that their mitochondrial defect knockdown could be rescued by overexpression of parkin, a ubiquitin-ligase complex component that has also been heavily linked to familial PD.
Immunocytochemistry/Immunofluorescence: PINK1 Antibody
Lin’s group examined at length the subcellular localization, processing, and stability of PINK1 with the PINK1 antibody (2). Interestingly, they found a dual compartment presence of PINK1 in the cytosol in addition to the mitochondria. The PINK1-parkin connection was further investigated using the PINK1 antibody in Drosophila, where loss of either PINK1 or parkin was found to increase mitochondrial fragmentation in a DRP1 dependent fashion in a manner somewhat different than that in mammalian systems (3). To address issues of such system discrepancies as well as establish the authenticity of various reported substrates, a Columbia group performed detailed topology analyses of the PINK1 protein using the PINK1 antibody, and determined which common PINK1 mutations affected native, wild-type location and orientation of PINK1 (4). Additional research has shown membrane potential dissipation triggering PINK1 autophosphorylation at serine residues 228 and 402, which in turn recruits parkin to the mitochondria (5).
Novus Biologicals offers various PINK1 reagents for your research needs including:
