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Disease-specific human tau folds were copied by endogenous mouse tau

Lövestam and collaborators seeded wild-type mouse brains with human Alzheimer’s-disease or corticobasal-degeneration tau. Later cryo-electron microscopy found that endogenous mouse tau retained the seed-specific folds, providing direct structural evidence for prion-like templated transmission in a mouse model.

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Stable ID
medicine-tau-fold-transmission-mouse-2026
Revision
medicine-tau-fold-transmission-mouse-2026.v1
Field
Medicine and biology · Neurodegeneration, tau biology and structural cryo-electron microscopy
Evidence
Tier 1 · Peer reviewed: Yes
Record state
Current · Peer-reviewed mouse-model result
Last checked

AI role

No substantive AI role was disclosed in the inspected article records.

Record details

Problem or result
Structural retention of disease-specific tau folds after templated propagation in vivo
Authors
Sofia Lövestam, Aki Shimozawa, Airi Tarutani, Reiko Ohtani and collaborators
Institutions
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology; Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Medical Science; collaborating neuropathology centres
Result date
Published online September 30, 2026

Why it matters

The work directly links disease-specific tau conformations with templated propagation in an intact brain and strengthens the mechanistic basis for treating distinct tau folds as biologically meaningful strains.

Limits

The mice did not develop the corresponding human clinical diseases. Seeds were injected directly into the brain, adult mouse tau differs from human tau, pooled material was used for structural preparations, and the result does not imply person-to-person contagiousness, prevention or treatment.

Sources

  1. Primary: Nature, prion-like transmission of human tau strains in mouse brain
  2. Specialist context: Nature News & Views on copied tau-fold structures
  3. Institutional record: University of Manchester publication record

Correction and revision history

  1. 2026-10-05 — Added after primary-source, scope, status, AI-role and limitation review.

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