Role of the Gut Microbiome and Bacterial Amyloids in the Development of Synucleinopathies.

Less than ten years ago, evidence began to accumulate about association between the changes in the composition of gut microbiota and development of human synucleinopathies, in particular sporadic form of Parkinson's disease. We collected data from more than one hundred and thirty experimental studies that reported similar results and summarized the frequencies of detection of different groups of bacteria in these studies. It is important to note that it is extremely rare that a unidirectional change in the population of one or another group of microorganisms (only an elevation or only a reduction) was detected in the patients with Parkinson's disease.

How Big Is the Yeast Prion Universe?

The number of yeast prions and prion-like proteins described since 1994 has grown from two to nearly twenty. If in the early years most scientists working with the classic mammalian prion, PrP, were skeptical about the possibility of using the term prion to refer to yeast cytoplasmic elements with unusual properties, it is now clear that prion-like phenomena are widespread and that yeast can serve as a convenient model for studying them. Here we give a brief overview of the yeast prions discovered so far and focus our attention to the various approaches used to identify them.

Identification of New FG-Repeat Nucleoporins with Amyloid Properties.

Amyloids are fibrillar protein aggregates with a cross-β structure. More than two hundred different proteins with amyloid or amyloid-like properties are already known. Functional amyloids with conservative amyloidogenic regions were found in different organisms.

Nonsense Mutations in the Yeast Gene Affect the [] Prion Propagation.

The essential gene encodes yeast translation termination factor eRF3. Previously, we isolated nonsense mutations and proposed that the viability of such mutants can be explained by readthrough of the premature stop codon. Such mutations, as well as the prion [], can appear in natural yeast populations, and their combinations may have different effects on the cells.