Tau is a neuronal microtubule-associated protein that appears to function in the formation and maintenance of axons by influencing microtubule organisation. Tau is a phosphoprotein and is more heavily phosphorylated in fetal than in adult brain, and is also hyperphosphorylated in Alzheimer's disease where it forms the major component of paired helical filaments (PHFs). Tau phosphorylation proba...

The paired helical filaments (PHFs) in Alzheimer's disease neurofibrillary tangles are composed of PHF-tau which is thought to be hyperphosphorylated because several residues in postmortem samples of PHF-tau and human fetal tau are phosphorylated while the corresponding sites are not phosphorylated in autopsy-derived normal adult human brain tau. To determine how the phosphorylation of these si...

Post-translational modifications of proteins are ubiquitous in living organisms, as they enable an accurate control the interactions these macromolecules. For mechanistic studies, it would be highly advantageous to able produce vitro post-translationally modified with site-specificity. Here, we demonstrate one facile way achieve this goal through use post-translational chemical mutagenesis. We ...

The microtubule (MT)-associated protein Tau is a natively unfolded protein, involved in a number of neurodegenerative disorders, collectively called tauopathies, aggregating in neurofibrillary tangles (NFT). It is an open question how the conversion from a MT bound molecule to an aggregation-prone Tau species occurs and, also, if and how tauopathy-related mutations affect its behavior in the ce...

In Alzheimer's disease (AD), the distribution and density of neurofibrillary tangles, a histological hallmark comprised predominately of phosphorylated tau protein, follows a distinct pattern through anatomically connected brain regions. Studies in transgenic mice engineered to regionally confine tau expression have suggested spreading of tau within neural networks. Furthermore, injection of pr...

Objective(s):Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common age-related neurodegenerative disorder. One of the hallmarks of AD is an abnormal accumulation of fibril forms of tau protein which is known as a microtubule associated protein. In this regard, inhibition of tau aggregation has been documented to be a potent therapeutic approach in AD and tauopathies. Unfortunately, the available syntheti...

Amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles are the pathological hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. However, there has been a long-standing discussion on the dynamic relations between Aβ and tau proteins, partially due to the lack of a tool to track protein dynamics in individual live neurons at the early stage of Aβ generation and tau phosphorylation. Here, we developed nanoplasmonic fiber tip ...

Induction by nerve growth factor of neurite outgrowth in PC12 cells is transcription-dependent and is associated with the accumulation of tau protein. It was recently shown that short-term treatment with staurosporine, a protein kinase alkaloid inhibitor, induced an elevation of tau protein levels and outgrowth of stable neurites. In this study, we analyzed the mechanism(s) by which nerve growt...

Tau tubulin kinase 2 (TTBK2) is a kinase known to phosphorylate tau and tubulin. It has recently drawn much attention due to its involvement in multiple important cellular processes. Here, we review the current understanding of TTBK2, including its sequence, structure, binding sites, phosphorylation substrates, and cellular processes involved. TTBK2 possesses a casein kinase 1 (CK1) kinase doma...