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. 1988 Oct;85(19):7384–7388. doi: 10.1073/pnas.85.19.7384

Alzheimer disease tangles share immunological similarities with multiphosphorylation repeats in the two large neurofilament proteins.

V M Lee 1, L Otvos Jr 1, M L Schmidt 1, J Q Trojanowski 1
PMCID: PMC282191  PMID: 2459703

Abstract

Immunological and structural analyses of neurofilament (NF) proteins with greater than 500 anti-NF monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) enumerated epitopes shared by NF proteins and Alzheimer neurofibrillary tangles. We identified the multiphosphorylation domain of the rat heaviest NF subunit--tandem repeats of Lys-Ser-Pro-Xaa (where Xaa is a small uncharged amino acid and serine is phosphorylated)--as the determinant recognized by 15 of the 16 mAbs from this collection of greater than 500 mAbs that detected neurofibrillary tangles. Most (11) of these 16 mAbs also recognized the previously characterized multiphosphorylation repeat in the human middle sized NF subunit. However, although these mAbs shared the ability to recognize NFTs, the antigen-binding domains of these 16 mAbs represented 13 separate classes based on their differential recognition of 12 synthetic peptides derived from the rat heaviest NF subunit and the human middle-sized NF subunit multiphosphorylation sites, NF subunits of 10 diverse species, and normal human tau protein. We conclude that NFTs share highly specific immunological and structural properties with specific rat heaviest NF subunit and human middle-sized NF subunit multiphosphorylation repeats.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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