Cellular parkin mutants are soluble under non-stress conditions.

The parkin gene encodes an E3 ubiquitin ligase and loss of function mutations herein are the most frequent cause of early-onset Parkinson's disease. Reports have suggested that aggregation of mutant protein is the cause of the loss of function. We established stably transfected SH-SY5Y dopaminergic cell lines expressing wild-type and mutant parkin proteins.