A University of Dundee discovery has the potential to help scientists better understand neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
Researchers, led by Professor Daan van Aalten in the University’s School of Life Sciences, have developed a new way to tag proteins in human cells with a small sugar molecule called O-GlcNAc. There are over 20,000 proteins in every human cell and approximately 20% of these contain O-GlcNAc.
The exact role played by O-GlcNAc remains a mystery but the molecule is found on proteins related to Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease and intellectual disability.
This has led scientists to hypothesize that O-GlcNAc disruption is…
