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Leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) is the most commonly mutated gene in familial Parkinson's disease1 and is also linked to its idiopathic form2. LRRK2 has been proposed to function in membrane trafficking3 and colocalizes with microtubules4. Despite the fundamental importance of LRRK2 for understanding and treating Parkinson's disease, structural information on the enzyme is limited. Here we report the structure of the catalytic half of LRRK2, and an atomic model of microtubule-associated LRRK2 built using a reported cryo-electron tomography in situ structure5. We propose that the conformation of the LRRK2 kinase domain regulates its interactions with microtubules, with a closed conformation favouring oligomerization on microtubules. We show that the catalytic half of LRRK2 is sufficient for filament formation and blocks the motility of the microtubule-based motors kinesin 1 and cytoplasmic dynein 1 in vitro. Kinase inhibitors that stabilize an open conformation relieve this interference and reduce the formation of LRRK2 filaments in cells, whereas inhibitors that stabilize a closed conformation do not. Our findings suggest that LRRK2 can act as a roadblock for microtubule-based motors and have implications for the design of therapeutic LRRK2 kinase inhibitors.

The performance, safety, and reliability of Li-ion batteries are determined by a complex set of multiphysics, multiscale phenomena that must be holistically studied and optimized. This paper provides a summary of the state of the art in a variety of research fields related to Li-ion battery materials, processes, and systems. The material presented here is based on a series of discussions at a recently concluded bilateral workshop in which researchers and students from India and the U.S. participated. It is expected that this summary will help understand the complex nature of Li-ion batteries and help highlight the critical directions for future research.

Increasing the carrier drift length by reducing the effective trap density through pre-illumination has been shown. The technique results in an increase of over a magnitude in the sensitivity of the device by increasing the number of quantum wells that are screened per carrier. Pre-illumination, too much of which can decrease the efficiency of four-wave mixing diffraction, can also be applied in speeding up the grating erasure by increasing the probability of electron hole recombination.

In connection to a conjecture of W. Lü, Q. Li and C. Yang (2014), we prove a result on small function sharing by a power of a meromorphic function with few poles with a derivative of the power. Our results improve a number of known results.