Pink surfin’ on the ER

The ER plays an active role in the biogenesis of the #Parkinson protein PINK1 in stabilizing its precursor on its way to #mitochondria in neurons. #mitophagy New preprint from my lab on BioRxiv!

Here Inma and Tabitha used the power of SunTag imaging to visualize where in a neuron PINK1 is being translated…and it turns out, that one organelle is not enough! PINK1 translation occurs at three-way contact sites between mitochondria, the ER and endolysosomes. And to find its way back to mitochondria, the PINK1 preprotein needs the help of ER-associated chaperones, as in the ER-SURF pathway described in yeast.