Year 2

Despite the growing number of diseases linked to single gene mutations, determining the molecular mechanisms by which such errors result in disease pathology has proven surprisingly difficult. The ability to correlate disease phenotypes with a specific mutation can be confounded by background of genetic and epigenomic differences between patient and control cells. To address this problem, we employed zinc finger nucleases-based genome editing in combination with a newly developed high-efficiency editing protocol to generate isogenic patient-derived induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) differing only at the most common mutation for Parkinson’s disease (PD), LRRK2 p.G2019S. We show that correction of the LRRK2 p.G2019S mutation rescues a panel of neuronal cell phenotypes including reduced dopaminergic cell number, impaired neurite outgrowth and mitochondrial dysfunction. These data reveal that PD-relevant cellular pathophysiology can be reversed by genetic repair, thus confirming the causative role of this prevalent mutation – a result with potential translational implications.