Reader Comments
Post a new comment on this article
Post Your Discussion Comment
Please follow our guidelines for comments and review our competing interests policy. Comments that do not conform to our guidelines will be promptly removed and the user account disabled. The following must be avoided:
- Remarks that could be interpreted as allegations of misconduct
- Unsupported assertions or statements
- Inflammatory or insulting language
Thank You!
Thank you for taking the time to flag this posting; we review flagged postings on a regular basis.
closeN17 resisting Aggregation
Posted by RayTruant on 06 May 2010 at 14:55 GMT
The authors make reference to our past work by Atwal, et al., Hum Mol Genet. 2007 Nov 1;16(21):2600-15, stating that we imply that huntingtin N17 resists aggregation.
Our conclusions from that study were in fact the opposite. We showed that a single point mutation within N17, a proline substitution at position eight, disrupted all structure of N17 and completely prevented any aggregation of 1-171, even at Q250 lengths and massive over-expression. However, wild-type N17 was required for the presence of any visible aggregates.
RE: N17 resisting Aggregation
dokh replied to RayTruant on 07 May 2010 at 03:51 GMT
During preparation of our manuscript, we accidentally equated toxicity with aggregation and thus misinterpreted the latter conclusion to read that the native structure of Nt17 prevents aggregation. There is no proof that aggregation causes toxicity; instead, there is mounting evidence for a negative correlation between aggregation and cell death. Our purpose was to illustrate the current debate on whether the Nt17 region promotes or inhibits aggregation of XN1. In error, we inappropriately place the above mentioned article on the side of inhibiting aggregation. Correct citations would strengthen the evidence for Nt17 promoting aggregation but does not conclude the debate. This mistake does not alter the main conclusions or discussion of our manuscript.