Nature Sub-Journal: Healthy Functions of TAU Proteins Associated with Dementia

Kassandra Ori-McKenney, an associate professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Davis and the paper's corresponding author, said the Tau protein has been linked to

It is believed that the "healthy" tau protein exists in the form of a single protein molecule that causes disease

"Tau proteins can self-assemble and disassemble in their natural form, so what is the tipping point that causes it to fail to disassemble and form a tangle?" Ori-McKenney said

Microtubule-associated Tau protein

Tau protein is one of a group of proteins found in a variety of cells, from single-celled amoeba to insects to humans, which are associated with microtubules, which are large protein filaments

Their 2019 paper suggests that healthy tau molecules can assemble with each other to form a "envelope" around the microtubules, a new behavior that the authors suggest can play a regulatory role in making certain other proteins more difficult or easier to attach to the microtubules

In the new paper, collaborators ori-McKenney, McKenney and the Czech Republic conducted a series of experiments

This means that tau proteins can alter compaction on the length of the microtubules, which in turn affects how

The team also looked at other proteins associated with the evolution of tau proteins, microtubule-associated proteins (MAP) 2 and 4

It is not known that MAP2 or MAP4 is related to

Other authors of the paper include: Ruensern Tan, Tracy Tan and Mariah Dacy of the University of California, Davis; Valerie sihaan, Marcus Braun and Zdenek Lansky, Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague; Tereza Humhalova and Lenka Libusova of Charles University in Prague; Samuel Lacey, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge

Journal Reference:

1. Valerie Siahaan, Ruensern Tan, Tereza Humhalova, Lenka Libusova, Samuel E.