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Researchers have found a link between RNA splicing alterations and tau-mediated neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease. The study, published today (October 8) in Cell Reports, examined both post-mortem human brain tissue and the overproduction of tau in fruit flies.
RNA splicing is a mechanism of processing transcripts so they can be translated into proteins. It occurs in the spliceosomal complex, a group of proteins that produce mature RNA. Joshua Shulman of Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital and his colleagues had previously looked at human brain autopsy samples and found that in people with Alzheimer’s disease, the spliceosome was associated with tau tangles, aggregates of tau protein that are a hallmark of the disease.
The new study from Shulman’s group shows that in the autopsied brains of Alzheimer’s disease patients, several spliceosomal complex proteins were more than six times more likely to bind to tau compared ...
