Protein Tweak May Trigger Alzheimer’s

[TECH NEWS]

Scientists have caught tiny amounts of a strangely shaped protein — a relative of a well-known suspect in Alzheimer’s disease — spreading destruction throughout the brains of mice. If a similar process happens in the human brain, it could help explain how Alzheimer’s starts, and even suggest new ways to stop the dangerous molecule’s spread. Many Alzheimer’s researchers believe the abundance of a molecule called A-beta in the brain is one of the key steps in developing the disease. A-beta commonly takes the form of a chain of 42 protein building blocks called amino acids. The new study chronicles the dangers of a modified A-beta that lacks the first two amino acids in the chain. Capping this stub is a rare, circular amino acid called pyroglutamate. Until recently, this form “has been largely ignored as some minor mysterious form of amyloid-beta,” says study coauthor George Bloom of the University of Virginia. Yet even trace amounts of this version, called pyroglutamylated A-beta, or pE A-beta, are devastating to mouse nerve cells, he and colleagues report online May 2 in Nature.

June 2, 2012, Laura Sanders, Science News 181 #11 (18)