IMPRIND partners Anthony Fitzpatrick and Michel Goedert just published cryo-EM structure of tau filaments at Nature. Alzheimer’s disease, the most common neurodegenerative disease, is characterised by the formation of filamentous Tau protein inside nerve cells and amyloid-beta peptides outside cells. Despite more than three decades of research into Tau filaments from a range of different neurodegenerative diseases, atomic structures were still lacking. Now, research by the groups of Sjors Scheres in the LMB’s Structural Studies Division and Michel Goedert, in the Neurobiology Division, in collaboration with Bernardino Ghetti at the Indiana University School of Medicine, has for the first time revealed the atomic structures of Tau filaments.

Tau filament structures, rendered in blue and white. In the background, a photomicrograph of a Bodian silver-stain preparation shows a neuron from the cerebral cortex of an individual affected by Alzheimer disease. The cytoplasm around the nucleus contains a flame-shaped neurofibrillary tangle. The Tau filaments appear to wrap around the neuron.

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