ATXN2 and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis: dAtx2 and dFmr1 are, respectively, the Drosophila orthologs of human Ataxin 2 (ATX2) and fragile mental retardation protein (FMRP), two RNA binding proteins implicated in synaptic plasticity and neuronal translational control [132,134,135,136] Mutations in the human ATXN2 gene have been linked to type-2 spinocerebellar ataxia (SCA2, [137,138,139] and a form of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis [131].