Browsing by Author "Sahlman, Sara-Sofia"

Mitochondrial disorders form a heterogenous disorder group with symptoms widely varying. They exist because of mutations in mtDNA or nuclear DNA, which encode mitochondrial proteins or regulate their functions. Because mitochondria are present in almost all cells in the human body, symptoms of mitochondrial disorders vary and can manifest in all tissues. The most common manifestation of mitochondrial disorders in adult patients is mitochondrial myopathy, which leads to muscle weakness and fatigue. Pathological findings of mitochondrial myopathy include changed activities in mitochondrial respiratory chain, centrally located nuclei and increased expressions of genes related to integrated mitochondrial stress responses. One of the neurological symptoms of mitochondrial disorders is parkinsonism. Parkinson’s disease is the world’s second most common neurodegenerative disease. Its clinical symptoms include bradykinesia and resting tremor, and its pathological hallmarks include alphasynuclein protein accumulations and loss of dopaminergic neurons in substantia nigra. Despite being described first time over a hundred years ago, the mechanisms behind Parkinson’s disease are still unclear. However, several genes have been associated with Parkinson’s disease. PINK1, encoding PINK1 protein, and PRKN, encoding Parkin protein, are genes, which mutations have been associated to early onset Parkinson’s disease. According to suggested theories, their normal physiological functions include mediating a special form of autophagy, mitophagy, and suppressing mitochondrial antigen presentation. It has been suggested that loss of PINK1 or PRKN could disrupt mitophagy, leading to accumulation of dysfunctional mitochondria in the cell, disrupting its homeostasis and leading to its death. This PINK1/Parkin-mediated mitophagy and its disruption could explain the death of dopaminergic neurons. In addition, loss of PINK1 and Parkin could also activate mitochondrial antigen presentation, which activates autoimmune response and destroys dopaminergic neurons presenting mitochondrial antigens. This suggests that Parkinson’s disease could have autoimmune-like mechanisms behind it. Together, these theories could explain the onset of Parkinson’s disease when PINK1 or PRKN are absent. In this thesis, the main objective was to study, how loss of PINK1 and PRKN would affect on muscle of aged mouse. More precisely, the effects of these genes to mitochondrial homeostasis were studied in terms of mitophagy and mitochondrial respiratory chain activity. In addition, it was studied, if these genes could induce mitochondrial myopathies or affect to existing condition by studying typical signs associated with mitochondrial myopathy, such as changes in activity of mitochondrial respiratory chain subunits, location of nuclei in muscle, changes in lipid and glycogen accumulation and expressions of genes associated to mitochondrial integrated stress responses. Finally, the theory of mitochondrial antigen presentation was studied. The results of this thesis provide more evidence to theory of PINK1/Parkin mediated mitophagy, but also suggest, that these proteins could be compensated. Based on the results, PINK1 seems to be more crucial for healthy muscle, but in already existing mitochondrial myopathy, loss of either of PINK1 or Parkin seems to improve the condition. According to this thesis, both PINK1 and Parkin, and mitophagy seem to be crucial in induction of mitochondrial myopathy. Despite more evidence is now provided to support the roles of PINK1 and Parkin in mitochondrial maintenance, their roles in mitochondrial antigen presentation did not receive support from this thesis.