Word: tau
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Tau, by contrast, clearly played a critical role in the brain. In its normal form it helps support the axons--long projections that carry signals from one nerve cell to another--holding them together like ties on a railroad track. When tau goes bad and clumps into tangles, the axons shrivel up and die. The case for tau further solidified in 1998, when researchers discovered a form of dementia associated with mutations of the tau gene. People with these mutations did not develop the plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease, but at death, their brains were riddled with tangles...
...question we still need to resolve," muses neurogeneticist John Hardy of the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., "is, What is the relationship between beta amyloid and tau?" That is why Hardy and others are so excited by the new strain of transgenic mice that scientists are breeding. By crossing mice that develop tangles with mice that develop plaques, they should finally be able to provide scientists with a research tool they've sorely lacked: lab animals that closely approximate the disease in humans...
Beyond that, things get murky. It's not yet clear, for example, when tau enters the picture. Up to now, most thought the tangles form much later than the plaques. But neuroscientist Peter Davies of Albert Einstein College of Medicine thinks this view will be proved wrong. He believes some still unidentified biochemical event precedes the formation of tangles and plaques, perhaps a malfunction in the machinery that puts proteins together. "The question from the therapeutic standpoint," he observes, "is, What's responsible for the symptoms of disease? What's killing the cells? Is it amyloid or tau...
BEYOND BETA AMYLOID AND TAU...