The research team is testing the hypothesis. Valentine, who was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005 and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this year, praised her colleagues. This research is the result of a long, successful international collaboration between UCLA and the University of Florence, she said. Our colleagues in Italy are exceptional scientists.
Co-authors on the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences research are Lucia Banci, a professor of chemistry at the University of Florence who is affiliated with the FiorGen Foundation; Armando Durazo, a UCLA graduate student of chemistry and biochemistry; Stefania Girotto, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Florence; Edith Butler Gralla, a senior research chemist at UCLA; Manuele Martinelli and Miguela Vieru, graduate students at the University of Florence; and Julian P. Whitelegge, an adjunct professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and UCLAs Brain Research Institute.
Copper-zinc superoxide dismutase, which was discovered in the 1960s, is an antioxidant enzyme that protects cells from free radicals, unstable atoms or molecules that can cause cell damage. The link with ALS came when researchers sequenced the genes of people who have the inherited form of ALS and found that some of them have mutations in the gene that codes for this enzyme. While the inherited form represents only a fraction of all ALS cases, this marked the first time there was any indication of a cause for any form of ALS, Valentine said.
For many years, Valentines laboratory has studied the normal version of the protein. While the normal protein has copper and zinc, scientists can make it with no metals. When it is first made inside the cell, it has no metals and only acquires them later, Valentine said.
We studied what happens to the protein if you have the metals, if you have no metals and if you
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Contact: Stuart Wolpert
swolpert@support.ucla.edu
310-206-0511
University of California - Los Angeles
27-Jun-2007