Nature cover is heavy!

Xinzhiyuan Report Source: Nature Editor: David Xiao Xianyu [Xinzhiyuan Guide] Abnormal tau protein is an important cause of Alzheimer's disease
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Researchers such as Sjors HW Scheres and Michel Goedert of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom published articles on Nature, classifying "tau protein diseases" based on different protein folding structures, and they were featured on the cover of Nature
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Ever heard of Alzheimer's disease? Nothing
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Have you heard of Alzheimer's disease? Alzheimer's disease, also known as Alzheimer's disease, is a neurodegenerative disease that progresses slowly and deteriorates over time
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The early symptoms are loss of short-term memory (can't remember what happened recently).
As the disease progresses gradually, there may be language barriers, disorientation (easy to get lost), emotional instability, inability to take care of themselves, and many abnormal behavior problems
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 At present, the pathogenesis of the disease is still unclear
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The scientific community has put forward a variety of hypotheses about the cause of Alzheimer's disease
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Two hypotheses that have become popular in recent years are Tau protein abnormalities and amyloid abnormalities
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 In January 2020, a study published in Science Translational Medicine showed that brain imaging of pathological tau tangles can reliably predict the location of brain atrophy in patients with Alzheimer's disease in the next year or earlier
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In contrast, amyloid may not have much to do with Alzheimer's disease
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This indicates that tau protein is more directly responsible for brain degeneration in Alzheimer's disease than amyloid
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 Tau proteins are a kind of microtubule-associated proteins, which are abundant in neurons of the central nervous system, but are relatively rare in other cells
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 One of the main functions of tau protein is to maintain the stability of neuron axon microtubules
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When tau protein is defective and cannot stabilize microtubules, it may cause a series of neurological diseases, and Alzheimer's disease is one of them
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 Scientists collectively refer to these diseases as tauopathies, which refer to neurodegenerative diseases caused by abnormalities in the structure of tau protein in the brain, namely "tau protein diseases
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"
 Obviously, there is not only one type of tau disease, how should we distinguish it? Since this type of disease is caused by abnormal tau protein, the abnormal structure of tau protein should be different from one disease to another
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 In fact, through cryo-electron microscopy, scientists have previously discovered Alzheimer's disease, Pick's disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and corticobasal degeneration (CBD).
) The structure of the tau protein is different
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 So naturally I thought of a way to classify tau protein diseases through the difference in tau protein folding structure
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 On September 29, 2021, researchers from the University of Cambridge, Sjors HW Scheres, Michel Goedert, etc.
published a paper on Nature entitled "Structure-based Classification of Tauopathies", which formally proposed this method
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https:// This article appeared on the cover of the latest issue of Nature
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  In this article, the researchers propose a method to classify tauopathies according to the fiber folding structure, which greatly supplements the basis of clinical diagnosis and neuropathology, and shows the potential to identify new cases of tauopathies
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 Tau protein diseases are classified according to the folding of tau protein filaments.
The picture is from MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, for example
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 Alzheimer’s disease has been mentioned above.
In fact, the structure of tau filaments in familial British dementia (FBD) and familial Danish dementia (FDD) is related to Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and The structure in primary age-related tauopathy (PART) cases is the same
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 For another example, the frequency of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is second only to Alzheimer's disease, and it is also a common tau disease
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 This article found that the tau filament structure of progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a brand-new three-layer folded structure, and the tau filament structure of globular glial tauopathy (GGT) and progressive nuclear supra Sexual palsy (PSP) is very similar, only the tail end is different
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 At present, scientists are trying to find the molecular mechanism of different tau protein fold formation, but the result is still unknown
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 The team of Sjors HW Scheres and Michel Goedert are also continuing to study this topic.
If one day can really decipher the molecular mechanism of tau protein fold formation, the diagnosis and treatment of tau protein disease will usher in a new era
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Reference link: https:// -filament-folds/https://en.
wikipedia.
org/wiki/Alzheimer%27s_disease