Andre Delacourte on Lipid raft proteome reveals ATP synthase complex in the cell surface.

COMMENT Alpha chain of ATP synthase is indeed a protein with many facets. One of them is that it binds to "early" tangles and could be therefore an interesting marker of the degenerating process in Alzheimer's disease. 0 andre.delacourte Associatio

Jie Shen on Recycling endosomes supply AMPA receptors for LTP.

COMMENT This new study from the Ehlers and Kauer groups provides important new insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying the expression of long-term potentiation (LTP), the principal cellular model for learning and memory. Prior work has established that i

Paul Coleman on Pseudophosphorylation and glycation of tau protein enhance but do not trigger fibrillization in vitro.

COMMENT These data are closely related to studies conducted by E. and E-M Mandelkow. Comments from them

luee rene on Amyloid Formation—Taking Things One Monomer at a Time

COMMENT It's interesting. lvjianbao 0

Kyle Wilcox on Focus on Aβ Fibrils: Targeting β-sheets and Foiling Them

COMMENT By a high-throughput screen using >3,000 small molecules, the authors found that 4,5-dianilinophthalimide (DAPH) inhibits the aggregation and neuronal toxicity associated with the Aβ1-42 peptide from the amyloid precursor protein, APP. After showing th

Takaomi Saido on Pseudophosphorylation and glycation of tau protein enhance but do not trigger fibrillization in vitro.

COMMENT Very suggestive in addressing the question whether tau phosphorylation is a cause or consequence of tauopathy. 0 saido

Takaomi Saido on Differences in the immune response to long term Abeta vaccination in C57BL/6 and B6D2F1 mice.

COMMENT Important and interesting. 0 saido

Andre Delacourte on A novel presenilin 1 mutation (Y154N) in a patient with early onset Alzheimer's disease with spastic paraparesis.

COMMENT This paper shows, one more time, that the very first clinical symptoms of FAD with early onset are not necessarily linked to memory. 0 andre.delacourte

Paul Coleman on Altered response to mirtazapine on gene expression profile of lymphocytes from Alzheimer's patients.

COMMENT This interesting paper reports an effect of a novel antidepressant on gene expression profiles of cultured lymphocytes derived from eight AD and eight control patients. To do this they used "homemade" cDNA arrays, representing 3,200 transcripts

Paul Coleman on Enhanced neurogenesis in Alzheimer's disease transgenic (PDGF-APPSw,Ind) mice.

COMMENT The concept of AD increasing neurogenesis is extremely interesting, and the proposal that this may be a compensatory response plausible. These findings directly disprove an alternative hypothesis: that the memory deficits of AD are related to the clinical

Paul Coleman on Early changes in neurons of the hippocampus and neocortex in transgenic rats expressing intracellular human a-beta.

COMMENT It would be interesting to consider this paper in relation to the work of Cataldo and Nixon indicating that endosomal and lysosomal enzymes and morphology are affected early in the course of AD. 0 Paul_Coleman

Paul Coleman on Polyglutamine expansion in ataxin-3 does not affect protein stability: implications for misfolding and disease.

COMMENT The story of misfolded proteins and disease gets more complicated. 0 Paul_Coleman

Yong Shen on Cell Death: Time to Push It Out of the Doldrums

COMMENT transmission is one event that affects learning and memory. Paul indicated in the comments that "synapses

Andre Delacourte on Neutralization of transthyretin reverses the neuroprotective effects of secreted amyloid precursor protein (APP) in APPSW mice resulting in tau phosphorylation and loss of hippocampal neurons: support for the amyloid hypothesis.

COMMENT This paper is not really in favor of the cascade hypothesis: The neuroprotective role of sAPP could be lost in AD, in parallel to the amyloid marker. Loss of function of APP is not a part of the amyloid cascade (gain of toxic function). Second, in the cas

Mary Reid on Fish Oil Swims Ahead in Dietary Brain Protection Race

COMMENT Does this study support a dissociation between LTP and spatial memory? Itokazu and colleagues (1) report that DHA inhibits the induction of long-term potentiation in the CA1 area in rats, as is shown to be the case for Aβ in many studies. I'd also be