This news summary states that Dr. Glabe's work weakens the channel hypothesis. On the contrary, I think his work is completely consistent with and supports the basic premise of the model, i.e., membrane disruption and loss of ion homeostasis. Where his work departs from others is that he is seeing a more general membrane disruption rather than defined channels or pores. I view these as all part of the channel hypothesis, however. In my opinion, there is no reason to discount the channel hypothesis (broadly defined) in favor of others at this point and certainly not because Dr. Glabe's work argues against it. Indeed, I think his work actually leads to quite the opposite conclusion.

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Reply by Charlie Glabe
With regard to the question of our recent work and the channel hypothesis, our work supports the general tenet of the channel hypothesis in that amyloid oligomers permeabilize membranes. The details are different because we do not observe anything that fits the definition of channel. Channels have discrete, unitary conductances, they open and close, they are often directional, and they are generally ion-specific. What we see is more like pores, in the sense that they are also not ion-selective, but pores typically have a discrete, unitary conductance, like one pore, two pores, three, etc.

So yes, our results generally support the main thrust of the "channel hypothesis," but not some of the details.

View all comments by Charles Glabe