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British Medical Bulletin 42:51-56 (1986)
© 1986 The British Council

research-article

SUBUNIT STRUCTURE OF THE ALZHEIMER TANGLE

C M Wischik*,{dagger} and R A Crowther*

*MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge
{dagger}Department of Psychiatry, Clinical School Cambridge

Abstract

The neurofibrillary tangles first described by Alzheimer have histological similarities with the cytoskeletal aggregates observed in a range of pathological and experimental settings. This paper briefly reviews some of the recent immunocytochemical and structural evidence concerning the nature of tangles in the context of the cell biology of the normal neuronal cytoskeleton. Recent structural work on the subunit organization of the paired helical filaments (PHFs), which make up the bulk of the Alzheimer tangle, casts doubt on the widely held view that the tangle arises by the aggregation, cross-linking or rearrangement of normal cytoskeletal protofilaments. Rather, the individual PHF appears to consist of a double helical stack of tansversely oriented subunits, giving the overall shape of a ribbon twisted into a left-handed helix. Computer processing of images of PHFs produces a cross-sectional density map through the filament and shows domain-like substructure within the subunit. The studies suggest the types of structure that might arise by the de-novo assembly of an aberrant protein, which accumulates in considerable abundance in tangle-bearing neurons. The biochemical nature of the PHF subunit protein remains to be determined.


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