PARL and neurodegenerative disease: This included two known proteins associated with MERCS, MFN2 [9] and TOMM40 [37], as well as neurodegenerative disease-associated genes [38, 39] such as WIPI2, CLASRP, BAG6, SOD1 and FUS which increase MERCS and MTCH2 and PARL which decrease MERCS (Fig. 2b).