Researchers have found that tau, the protein best known for forming tangles inside dying neurons, can slip into the cell's energy-producing mitochondria and reverse the direction of their chemistry, a route to damage that operates separately from the tangles themselves.
The finding, published in the journal Neuron by a team led by Stanford Medicine scientists, describes a mechanism that had been suspected but never explained. Stanford's announcement noted that the long-observed connection between abnormal tau and mitochondrial problems had never been pinned down until now.
