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The ordered assembly of tau protein into abnormal filaments is a defining characteristic of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other neurodegenerative disorders. It is not known if the structures of tau filaments vary within, or between, the brains of individuals with AD. We used a combination of electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) and immuno-gold negative-stain electron microscopy (immuno-EM) to determine the structures of paired helical filaments (PHFs) and straight filaments (SFs) from the frontal cortex of 17 cases of AD (15 sporadic and 2 inherited) and 2 cases of atypical AD (posterior cortical atrophy). The high-resolution structures of PHFs and SFs from the frontal cortex of 3 cases of AD, 2 sporadic and 1 inherited, were determined by cryo-EM. We also used immuno-EM to study the PHFs and SFs from a number of cortical and subcortical brain regions. PHFs outnumbered SFs in all AD cases. By cryo-EM, PHFs and SFs were made of two C-shaped protofilaments with a combined cross-β/β-helix structure, as described previously for one case of AD. The higher resolution structures obtained here showed two additional amino acids at each end of the protofilament. The immuno-EM findings, which indicated the presence of repeats 3 and 4, but not of the N-terminal regions of repeats 1 and 2, of tau in the filament cores of all AD cases, were consistent with the cryo-EM results. These findings show that there is no significant variation in tau filament structures between individuals with AD. This knowledge will be crucial for understanding the mechanisms that underlie tau filament formation and for developing novel diagnostics and therapies.
Pubmed ID: 30276465 RIS Download
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Software for macromolecular model building, model completion and validation, and protein modelling using X-ray data. Coot displays maps and models and allows model manipulations such as idealization, rigid-body fitting, ligand search, Ramachandran plots, non-crystallographic symmetry and more. Source code is available.
View all literature mentionsA molecular refinement program with two main modes: REVIEW, which checks and updates the input model to establish that the geometric restraints can be properly set up, and REFINE mode, which is the standard mode and documented in keywords. In REVIEW users can: check model coordinates and write an extended output set of coordinates, find disulphide bonds and other covalent links, cis-peptides, output the sequence and REMARK records. In REFINEMENT mode users can carry out rigid body, tls, restrained or unrestrained refinement against Xray data, or idealisation of a macromolecular structure. Also in REFINEMENT mode, Refmac produces an MTZ output file containing weighted coefficients for SigmaA weighted mFo-DFcalc and 2mFo-DFcalc maps. The program is supported by CCP4.
View all literature mentionsA structure-validation web application which provides an expert-system consultation about the accuracy of a macromolecular structure model, diagnosing local problems and enabling their correction. MolProbity works best as an active validation tool (used as soon as a model is available and during each rebuild/refine loop) and when used for protein and RNA crystal structures, but it may also work well for DNA, ligands and NMR ensembles. It produces coordinates, graphics, and numerical evaluations that integrate with either manual or automated use in systems such as PHENIX, KiNG, or Coot.
View all literature mentionsThe SciCrunch Infrastructure was developed as a cooperative data platform to be used by diverse communities in making data more FAIR.
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