Neurofibrillary tangles of paired helical filaments

Lower Motor Neuron Disease with Accumulation of Neurofilaments in a Cat

“…Our case is similar, however, to all experimentally induced or spontaneously occurring neurofibrillary accumulations reported in animals, since the stored material is composed of neurofilaments [16]. The helically twisted pairs of filaments, previously thought to be neurotubules, have only been reported in human diseases [17]. Size and fine structure of the neurofilaments in our cat are similar to those described [3, 161. There is, however, considerable variation among these diseases in the localization of the accumulated neurofilaments.…”

Characterization by atomic force microscopy and cryoelectron microscopy of tau polymers assembled in Alzheimer's disease1

“…PHF-like polymers could be assembled in vitro using tau [7,24,25,45], being a short region of this protein the minimum sequence required for its selfassembly [32]. The structural characterization of PHF has improved during the last years thanks to the use of techniques such as X-ray diffraction [51] and electron microscopy [1,24,31,39,47].…”

Plaques, tangles and Alzheimer's disease

“…Tangles consist of large clusters (Kidd, 1963;Wisniewski et al 1976a) of PHF each 10-13 nm wide, which measure around 22 nm at their widest and are reduced to approximately 10 nm at intervals of 80 nm. In affected neurons bundles of PHF fill much of the cell soma, displacing and intermingling with otherwise apparently normal cytoplasmic elements.…”