PINK1- and Parkin-mediated mitophagy at a glance

PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1) and Parkin are mutated in many cases of early-onset familial Parkinson's disease (PD), but how these proteins are related to the pathogenesis of PD was unclear. Recently, work in cultured cells has shown that Parkin can mediate autophagy of damaged mitochondria (termed mitophagy) (Narendra et al., 2008) downstream of PINK1 (Geisler et al., 2010a; Matsuda et al., 2010; Narendra et al., 2010b; Vives-Bauza et al., 2010). These reports suggest that a quality control pathway maintains the mitochondrial homeostasis in many cell types, including in dopaminergic neurons, whose malfunction causes the motor deficits in PD. Here, we briefly summarize how defective mitochondria in a cell are…