A phylogenetic inference of neurodegenerative diseases from protein sequences

Neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's disease have many similarities at cellular level. Parkinson's disease is a neurodegenerative disorder which is characterized by the loss of dopaminergic neurons in the brain. The symptoms are resting tremor and changes in facial expression. Huntington's disease is an autosomal dominant disorder that causes the breakdown of nerve cells in the brain. The symptoms are cognitive changes and problems with the ability to swallow. Alzheimer's disease is a brain disease, which is due to the accumulation of amyloid β protein in the brain. The symptoms are confusion with time and lose in memory functions. These diseases carry parallel mechanism such as protein aggregation that caused by protein misfolding. Due to the similarities found from the characteristics observed from three diseases, it is important to know if these diseases are related to each other at molecular level. Phylogenetic method used to identify the similarities of these neurodegenerative diseases proteins. From the result, most of the proteins of these three neurodegenerative diseases have low percentage identity and mixed into the different cluster. Thus, they are not related to each other, although some of them might have same functions. This study could help in the discovery of a new drug for the pharmacotherapeutics of these neurodegenerative diseases.