Parkin, an E3 ubiquitin ligase, has been studied extensively in all major protein misfolding aggregating diseases, especially Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease, but the role of parkin in TSEs remains unknown.
HECTD2, an E3 ubiquitin ligase, has been linked to the incubation time of prion disease in mice, and its polymorphisms have been associated with sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in the British population.
We have used a heterogeneous stock of mice to identify Hectd2, an E3 ubiquitin ligase, as a quantitative trait gene for prion disease incubation time in mice.