PRKN and Parkinson disease: In PD models, Tain et al., 2009 found evidence that the overexpression of the translation inhibitor Thor (4E-BP1), the Drosophila ortholog of the mammalian EIF4EBP1, suppressed the pathologic phenotypes of both Pink1 and Parkin mutants, including dopaminergic neuron degeneration in Drosophila [8].