How Do Protein Tangles Get so Long in Alzheimer's? (IMAGE)
Caption
Biophysicists have discovered a new mechanism by which aggregates of tau protein, called fibrils, can grow. Two fibrils can attach end-to-end. This figure shows a fibril composed of smaller fibrils labeled in three colors. The researcher labeled tau proteins with three different fluorescent dyes and allowed them to aggregate in separate test tubes. Then she mixed these different colored fibrils together in a fourth test tube. Images taken with a super-resolution fluorescence microscope showed long fibrils with short sections of each color, indicating that fibrils from original test tubes must have joined ends to form longer fibrils.
Credit
Carol Huseby/Ohio State University
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With attribution to Carol Huseby/OSU
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