Huntington’s disease (HD) is a progressive neurological disorder caused by a mutation in the huntingtin gene, which encodes the huntingtin protein. Last year, the first structure of this protein was published. With a global resolution of approximately 4 Angstroms, this was a fantastic leap forward in our understanding of this protein. This structure helped our knowledge of Huntingtin, but there is still much more to find out. The structure published by this group is the only representative of about 75% of the protein, the other 25% being too mobile to capture using many high-resolution mapping techniques. One such mobile area is Exon 1, the location of the triplet repeat expansion responsible for HD. This critical region of the protein requires more structural information to understand. To obtain higher resolution images of this region, we are looking for huntingtin interaction partners that bind this region. These interaction partners will hopefully stabilize the structure enough to image the area. Interaction partners will be verified by a Pull-Down assay. Utilizing the FLAG-Tag and His-Tag present on HuntingtinPolyQ54+HAP40(HTT) complex used in this assay, we will look to identify reliable interaction partners.

The SGC is a registered charity (number 1097737) that receives funds from AbbVie, Bayer Pharma AG, Boehringer Ingelheim, Canada Foundation for Innovation, Eshelman Institute for Innovation, Genome Canada through Ontario Genomics Institute [OGI-055], Innovative Medicines Initiative (EU/EFPIA) [ULTRA-DD grant no. 115766], Janssen, Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, MSD, Novartis Pharma AG, Innovation and Science (MRIS), Pfizer, São Paulo Research Foundation-FAPESP, Takeda, and Wellcome.