A protective role of protein inclusions, possibly by sequestering potentially more toxic intermediate oligomeric forms of the polyglutamine-containing protein, has been suggested in mouse models of HD (Arrasate et al., 2004), SCA1 (Watase et al., 2002) or SCA7 (Yoo et al., 2003). The gene discussed is ATXN1; the disease is Huntington disease.