Lack of Evidence for Decreased Protein Stability in the 2397 (Met) Haplotype of the Leucine Rich Repeat Kinase 2 Protein Implicated in Parkinson’s Disease

Missense mutations in the leucine rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene are the leading genetic cause of autosomal dominant familial Parkinson’s disease. We previously reported that two mutations within the ROC domain, namely R1441C and A1442P, exhibit increased protein degradation leading to lowered steady state LRRK2 protein levels in HEK293 cells. More recently, the common WD40 domain LRRK2 haplotype, Met2397, which is a risk factor for Crohn’s disease, has been shown to lower steady state protein levels in HEK293 cells. In view of recent evidence implicating LRRK2 and inflamemation in PD, we investigated the effects of Met2397 on LRRK2 expression, and compared them to the Thr2397 variant and other LRRK2 mutants. In this study, we transfected HEK293 cells with plasmid constructs encoding the different LRRK2 variants, and analyzed the resulting protein levels by Western blot and flow cytometry. Here we found that both the Met2397 and Thr2397 haplotypes yield similar levels of LRRK2 protein expression and do not appear to impact cell viability in HEK293 cells, compared to other LRRK mutants. Thus, we have concluded that the Met2397 haplotype is unlikely to play a role in LRRK2 mediated or idiopathic PD.