The mitochondrial fusion-promoting factor mitofusin is a substrate of the PINK1/parkin pathway.
Loss-of-function mutations in the PINK1 or parkin genes result in recessive heritable forms of parkinsonism.Genetic studies of Drosophila orthologs of PINK1 and parkin indicate that PINK1, a mitochondrially targeted serine/threonine kinase, acts upstream of Parkin, a cytosolic ubiquitin-protein ligase, to promote mitochondrial fragmentation, althou