Cellular processes associated with LRRK2 function and dysfunction.

Mutations in the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) encoding gene are the most common cause of monogenic Parkinson's Disease (PD). The identification of LRRK2 polymorphisms associated with increased risk for sporadic PD, as well as the observation that LRRK2-PD has an almost indistinguishable pathological phenotype from the sporadic form of disease, suggested LRRK2 as the culprit to provide understanding for both familial and sporadic PD cases. LRRK2 is a large protein with both GTPase and kinase functions. Mutations segregating with PD reside within the enzymatic core of LRRK2, suggesting the modification of its activity greatly impacts disease onset and progression. Although progress has been gained since its discovery in 2004, there is still much to be understood regarding LRRK2's physiological and neurotoxic properties. Unsurprisingly, given the presence of multiple enzymatic domains, LRRK2 has been associated with a diverse set of cellular functions and signalling pathways including mitochondrial function, vesicle trafficking together with endocytosis, retromer complex modulation and autophagy. This review will discuss the state of current knowledge for the role of LRRK2 in health and disease with discussion of potential substrates of phosphorylation and functional partners with particular emphasis on signalling mechanisms. As well, the use of immune cells in LRRK2 research and the role of oxidative stress as a regulator of LRRK2 activity and cellular function shall also be discussed. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved

A Theory of the Casimir Effect for Compact Regions

We develop a mathematically precise framework for the Casimir effect. Our working hypothesis, verified in the case of parallel plates, is that only the regularization-independent Ramanujan sum of a given asymptotic series contributes to the Casimir pressure. As an illustration, we treat two cases: parallel plates, identifying a previous cutoff free version (by G. Scharf and W. W.) as a special case, and the sphere.We finally discuss the open problem of the Casimir force for the cube. We propose an Ansatz for the exterior force and argue why it may provide the exact solution, as well as an explanation of the repulsive sign of the force.Comment: version published, 23 page

¿Los sujetos con obesidad subestiman su tamaño corporal? Una revisión narrativa de los métodos de estimación y teorías explicativas

The widespread of overweight and obesity in the developed countries is a real societal issue, nevertheless a considerable amount of subjects with obesity do not recognize their condition. Researchers used different methods to assess body size perception by obese subjects and the results show that while some subjects with obesity estimate accurately or overestimate their body size, others underestimate their weight and their body size measures. A failure to identify overweight or obesity has serious consequences on the subject's health, as it is widely recognised that self-awareness is the first step to engage in a rehabilitation program. The spread of obesity underestimation and its implications make the case for a new hypothetical body image disorder, which has been called Fatorexia (TM). It consists in the significant underestimation of body size by subjects with obesity, as they are unable or unwilling to acknowledge their condition. Some researchers proposed a social explanation to the underestimation phenomenon, but here an alternative hypothesis, the Allocentric Lock Theory (ALT), is outlined to describe the mechanisms behind the underestimation of body size by subjects with obesity