Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2011 Oct;17(5):514-24.
doi: 10.1111/j.1755-5949.2010.00177.x. Epub 2010 Jun 14.

The role of tau in Alzheimer's disease and related disorders

Rodrigo Medeiros  1 , David Baglietto-Vargas, Frank M LaFerla
Affiliations
Review

The role of tau in Alzheimer's disease and related disorders

Rodrigo Medeiros et al. CNS Neurosci Ther. 2011 Oct.

Abstract

Tau, the microtubule-associated protein, forms insoluble filaments that accumulate as neurofibrillary tangles in Alzheimer's disease (AD) and related tauopathies. Under physiological conditions, tau regulates the assembly and maintenance of the structural stability of microtubules. In the diseased brain, however, tau becomes abnormally hyperphosphorylated, which ultimately causes the microtubules to disassemble, and the free tau molecules aggregate into paired helical filaments. A large body of evidence suggests that tau hyperphosphorylation results from perturbation of cellular signaling, mainly through imbalance in the activities of different protein kinases and phosphatases. In AD, it appears that ß-amyloid peptide (Aß) plays a pivotal role in triggering this imbalance. In this review, we summarize our current understanding of the role of tau in AD and other tauopathies, and highlight key issues that need to be addressed to improve the success of developing novel therapies.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors state that they have no conflict of interest pertaining to this manuscript.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Key discoveries in tau protein research.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Molecular mechanisms of tau regulation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Glenner GG, Wong CW. Alzheimer's disease: Initial report of the purification and characterization of a novel cerebrovascular amyloid protein. Biochem Biophys Res Commun 1984;120:885–890. - PubMed
    1. Grundke‐Iqbal I, Iqbal K, Tung YC, Quinlan M, Wisniewski HM, Binder LI. Abnormal phosphorylation of the microtubule‐associated protein tau (tau) in Alzheimer cytoskeletal pathology. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 1986;83:4913–4917. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Walsh DM, Selkoe DJ. Deciphering the molecular basis of memory failure in Alzheimer's disease. Neuron 2004;44:181–193. - PubMed
    1. Hardy J, Selkoe DJ. The amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer's disease: Progress and problems on the road to therapeutics. Science 2002;297:353–356. - PubMed
    1. Tanzi RE, Bertram L. Twenty years of the Alzheimer's disease amyloid hypothesis: A genetic perspective. Cell 2005;120:545–555. - PubMed

Publication types