An Alzheimer’s disease protein controls the speed at which
materials move through brain cells, and defects could lead to deadly pileups of
the kind seen in neurodegenerative disease, a new publication finds
Imagine if you could open up your brain and look inside.
What you would see is a network of nerve cells called
neurons, each with its own internal highway system for transporting essential
materials between different parts of the cell.
When this biological machinery is operating smoothly, tiny
motor proteins ferry precious cargo up and down each neuron along thread-like
roadways called microtubule tracks. Brain cells are able to receive
information, make internal repairs and send instructions to the body, telling
the fingers to flex or the toes to curl.