Table I. Genetic mutations in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Parkinson's Disease (PD).

Gene/protein	Pathology	Function	Form	Refs.
APP	Senile plaques	unknown	familial AD	Goate et al. 1991
PS1	Senile plaques	Notch signaling	familial AD	Sherrington et al. 1995
PS2	Senile plaques	Notch signaling	familial AD	Levy-Lahad et al. 1995
ApoE	Senile plaques & neurofibrillary tangles	cholesterol regulation and triglyceride metabolism	familial & sporadic AD	Corder et al. 1993; Strittmatter and Roses 1996
α-synuclein	Lewy bodies	synaptic vesicle processing	familial & sporadic PD	Polymeropoulos et al. 1997
DJ-1	unknown	cellular stress response	familial PD	Kruger et al. 1998; Zarranz et al. 2004
LRRK2	Lewy bodies	mitochondrial-associated protein kinase	familial & sporadic PD	Zimprich et al. 2004; Paisan-Ruiz et al. 2004
Parkin	Lewy bodies, rarely	ubiquitination of proteins	familial PD	Kitada et al. 1998
PINK-1	unknown	mitochondrial kinase	familial PD	Valente et al. 2004
UCH-L1	Lewy bodies	de-ubiquitination of proteins	familial & sporadic PD	Leroy et al. 1998