Emotion Recognition and Psychological Comorbidity in Friedreich’s Ataxia

Teresa Costabile, Veronica Capretti, Filomena Abate, Agnese Liguori, Francesca Paciello, Chiara Pane, Anna De Rosa, Silvio Peluso, Giuseppe De Michele, Alessandro Filla, Francesco Saccà; Cerebellum (2018). doi:10.1007/s12311-018-0918-5

Little effort has been made to understand the psychological and emotional burden of the disease. The aim of our study was to measure patients’ ability to recognize emotions using visual and non-verbal auditory hints, and to correlate this ability with psychological, neuropsychological, and neurological variables. FRDA patients have impaired emotion recognition that may be secondary to neuropsychological impairment. Depression and anxiety were not higher in FRDA as compared to HC and should not be considered as part of the disease.

Biophysical characterisation of the recombinant human frataxin precursor

Ignacio Hugo Castro, Alejandro Ferrari, María Georgina Herrera, Martín Ezequiel Noguera, Lorenzo Maso, Monica Benini, Alessandra Rufini, Roberto Testi, Paola Costantini and Javier Santos; FEBS Open Bio (2018). Accepted Article. DOI: 10.1002/2211-5463.12376

We investigated the conformation, stability and function of a recombinant precursor variant (His6-TAT-FXN1-210), which includes a TAT peptide in the N-terminal region to assist with transport across cell membranes. His6-TAT-FXN1-210 was expressed in E. coli and conditions were found for purifying folded protein free of aggregation, oxidation or degradation, even after freezing and thawing.