To elucidate involvement of tau protein in neurodegenerative processes in Alzheimer disease and related disorders, self-assembly process and degradative process of tau protein were examined. To understand the mechanisms of the aggregation, binding affinity of tau protein to 14-3-3 protein, which converts tau to a filamentous or aggregated form. was investigated employing a surface plasmon reson...

To elucidate the relationship between cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) total-tau (T-tau) and phosphorylated tau (P-tau) with the tau PET ligand 18F-AV-1451 in Alzheimer's disease (AD), we examined 30 cognitively healthy elderly (15 with preclinical AD), 14 prodromal AD, and 39 AD dementia patients. CSF T-tau and P-tau were highly correlated (R = 0.92, P < 0.001), but they were only moderately associat...

Fibrils composed of tau protein are a pathological hallmark of several neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Here we show that when recombinant tau protein is seeded with paired helical filaments (PHFs) isolated from AD brain, the amyloid formed shares many of the structural features of AD PHFs. In contrast, tau amyloids formed with heparin as an inducing agent-a commo...

Intracellular accumulations of filamentous tau inclusions are neuropathological hallmarks of neurodegenerative diseases known as tauopathies. The discovery of multiple pathogenic tau gene mutations in many kindreds with familial frontotemporal dementia with parkinsonism linked to chromosome 17 (FTDP-17) unequivocally confirmed the central role of tau abnormalities in the etiology of neurodegene...

Tau is the major microtubule-associated protein in neurons involved in microtubule stabilization in the axonal compartment. Changes in tau gene expression, alternative splicing and posttranslational modification regulate tau function and in tauopathies can result in tau mislocalization and dysfunction, causing tau aggregation and cell death. To uncover proteins involved in the development of ta...

The role of Tau phosphorylation in neurofibrillary degeneration linked to Alzheimer's disease remains to be established. While transgenic mice based on FTDP-17 Tau mutations recapitulate hallmarks of neurofibrillary degeneration, cell models could be helpful for exploratory studies on molecular mechanisms underlying Tau pathology. Here, "human neuronal cell lines" overexpressing Wild Type or mu...

Inge Grundke-Iqbal and Khalid Iqbal found a connection between microtubule associated tau and Alzheimer's disease. They described that abnormally phosphorylated tau is a component of the paired helical filaments found in the disease. Afterwards they described that tau hyperphosphorylation prevents microtubule assembly. Now trying to complement the relationship between microtubules and tau phosp...

Aggregation and cleavage are two hallmarks of Tau pathology in Alzheimer disease (AD), and abnormal fragmentation of Tau is thought to contribute to the nucleation of Tau paired helical filaments. Clearance of the abnormally modified protein could occur by the ubiquitin-proteasome and autophagy-lysosomal pathways, the two major routes for protein degradation in cells. There is a debate on which...

Tau is a microtubule-associated protein well known for its stabilization of microtubules in axons. Recently, it has emerged that tau participates in synaptic function as part of the molecular pathway leading to amyloid-beta (Aβ)-driven synaptotoxicity in the context of Alzheimer's disease. Here, we report the implication of tau in the profound functional synaptic modification associated with sy...

Abnormal tau aggregates are presumed to be neurotoxic and are an important therapeutic target for multiple neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease. Growing evidence has shown that tau intermolecular disulfide cross-linking is critical in generating tau oligomers that serve as a building block for higher-order aggregates. Here we report that a small molecule inhibitor prevents ...