Three members of a family of proteins have been identified that are important to helping us fine tune the activity of brain chemicals which enable us to walk or stand at will, scientists report.
The findings point toward the proteins KCTD5, KCTD17 and KCTD2 as potential new therapeutic targets in conditions like Parkinson’s and dystonia where control of movement is lost, says Dr. Brian Muntean, pharmacologist and toxicologist at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University and co-corresponding author of the study published in the journal PNAS.
Dr. Kirill A. Martemyanov, chair of the Department of Neuroscience at the Florida Campus of the Scripps Research Institute in Jupiter, Florida, also is a corresponding author.
The fine tuning these KCTD family members appear to enable is called neuromodulation, which involves hundreds if not thousands of proteins inside neurons that are…
