“…Among these diseases, SCA17 is caused by Ͼ42 CAG repeats in the TATA box-binding protein (TBP) gene (Koide et al, 1999;Nakamura et al, 2001), which encodes a general transcription factor that plays critical roles in transcriptional initiation (Nikolov and Burley, 1994). SCA17 patients show late-onset symptoms that include ataxia, dystonia, parkinsonism, and psychiatric abnormalities, accompanied by progressive neurodegeneration in the cerebellum (Koide et al, 1999;Nakamura et al, 2001;Rolfs et al, 2003;Bauer et al, 2004;Bruni et al, 2004;Toyoshima et al, 2004). Although the exact pathological mechanisms of SCA17 remain elusive, emerging evidence indicates that transcriptional dysregulation caused by mutant TBP represents a major form of toxicity .…”