Parkin, a key player in Parkinson's disease pathogenesis: A review

Neurodegenerative diseases are an assortment of chronic diseases affecting the central nervous system. The primary cause of these diseases is a persistent decline in neuronal function, which results in cerebral atrophy. Parkinson's disease is currently the second most prominent neurodegenerative disease and might be the most exacerbated one too. Currently, there are more than 6 million reported cases of Parkinson's disease globally, which will keep on rising. The emergence of typical symptoms is diagnosed at later stages of the disease, while the appearance of non-motor symptoms becomes quite common and easily observable. Parkinson's disease can be caused by mutations in both autosomal dominant and autosomal recessive genes. One primary reported cause of autosomal recessive Parkinson's disease is mutations in the Parkin. This protein is crucial for maintaining cellular homeostasis, which performs an essential role in the ubiquitin-proteasome system and aids in the removal of misfolded as well as aggregated proteins. The review provides a comprehensive overview of Parkin's pathological aspects, expression, insights into its structure, various functions performed by Parkin, post-translational modifications of Parkin, dysregulation, and therapeutic implications. Through a critical evaluation of several existing research and review papers, we observed various significant features of Parkin covered in this review.