Fly provides genetic insights into Parkinson's associated mutations in VPS35 (PARK17)

Malik BR, Godena VK, Whitworth AJ. VPS35 pathogenic mutations confer no dominant toxicity but partial loss of function in Drosophila and genetically interact with parkin. Hum Mol Genet. 2015 Aug 6. pii: ddv322. PMID: 26251041.

From the abstract: "Mutations in VPS35 (PARK17) cause autosomal dominant, late onset Parkinson's disease (PD). ... we generated transgenic Drosophila that express variant forms of human VPS35 found in PD cases and the corresponding variants of the Drosophila ortholog. We did not find evidence of dominant toxicity ... we found that the D620N mutation confers a partial loss of function. Recently, VPS35 has been linked to the formation of mitochondria-derived vesicles, which mediate the degradation of mitochondrial proteins and contribute to mitochondrial quality control. This process is also promoted by two other PD-lined genes parkin (PARK2) and PINK1 (PARK6). We demonstrate here that vps35 genetically interacts with parkin but interestingly not with pink1. Strikingly, Vps35 overexpression is able to rescue several parkin-mutant phenotypes. Together these findings provide in vivo evidence that the D620N mutation likely confers pathogenicity through a partial loss of function mechanism and that this may be linked to other known pathogenic mechanisms such as mitochondrial dysfunction."