Six- to eight-week old C57BL/6 mice were purchased from Harlan, Indianapolis, IN. Animal maintenance and experiments were in accordance with National Institutes of Health guidelines and were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use committee of the Rush University Medical Center, Chicago, IL. For acute MPTP intoxication, mice received four intraperitoneal (i.p.) injections of MPTP-HCl (18 mg/kg of free base; Sigma Chemical Co., St. Louis, MO) in saline at 2-h intervals (Ghosh et al. 2007 (link), 2009 (link); Roy et al. 2012 (link)). Control animals received only saline.