Fig. 1.

The neurobiology of microtubule associated protein tau. In physiological conditions, tau is associated with microtubules to stabilize them and to keep healthy axonal transport and neurite outgrowth. However, in the brain of tauopathy patients, the disruption of normal phosphorylation events results in aberrant phosphorylation of tau which negatively affects its affinity for the microtubules and leads to microtubule destabilization. Once detached from the microtubules, hyper-phosphorylated tau tends to aggregate into paired helical tau filaments, which eventually become insoluble and precipitate inside the cells generating the neurofibrillary tau tangles.