Figure 2.

Synaptic and spine toxicity induced by Aβ oligomers and rescue of Aβ-induced spine loss by h-tau-S2A. (A) Aβ treatment increased endogenous tau phosphorylation at the 12E8 sites. Hippocampal neurons at 13 days in vitro were treated with Aβ oligomers for 12h and used for western blot analysis. Actin serves as loading control. (B–E) Effects of Aβ treatment on PSD-95 clusters (C), GluR1 clusters (D), Synapsin I clusters (E) and spine number (B) in EGFP-transfected neurons. Data quantification is shown in (B) (***P< 0.001 in Student's t-test). (F–H) Resistance of h-tau-S2A-transfected neurons to Aβ-induced loss of spines (F and G) and PSD-95 and GluR1 clusters (H). Scale bar, 10 μm.