Figure 1.

Potential interactions linking tau to cell death in Parkinson's disease patients, showing established links between tau, LRRK2, α-synuclein and cellular dysfunction. Tau has been shown to alter the aggregation of α-synuclein (1), and has been described as being aggregated in mouse models of LRRK2 disease (2). A putative cellular interaction between tau, α-synuclein and lrrk2 could impact on a large number of cellular processes that all three proteins have been suggested to be involved in, including mitochondrial dysfunction (3), impaired translation (4), altered autophagy (5), proteasomal dysfunction (6), and altered vesicle trafficking (7).