PINK1 and Parkinson disease: We sought to further characterize PINK1-/- rats specifically with respect to α-synuclein pathology because spontaneous formation of α-synuclein aggregates (without α-synuclein overexpression or injection) is a rare and important feature of PD animal models and because α-synuclein aggregation has been implicated both genetically and biochemically as a mechanism of PD pathogenesis as well as a potential therapeutic target (Goldberg and Lansbury, 2000; Creed and Goldberg, 2018).