Beginning in mid-February 2008, the 1997-2007 online version of the Science Watch® newsletter, ESI-Topics.com, and in-cites.com, will all be featured together on the redesigned ScienceWatch.com. All previous content from the three sites will be permanently archived, and remain accessible from any existing bookmarks to the archived pages. No new content will be added to this site. Updates and new content (updated biweekly) are available at ScienceWatch.com now.

Emerging Research Fronts Comments
Return to menu of Emerging Research Fronts

ESI Special Topics, April 2003
Citing URL: http://www.esi-topics.com/erf/2003/april03-GeorgeJackson.html

From •>>April 2003

George Jackson M.D. Ph.D answers a few questions about this month's emerging research front in field of Neuroscience & Behavior:

Neuroscience & Behavior
Title: "Human wild-type tau interacts with wingless pathway components and produces neurofibrillary pathology in Drosophila"
 Authors: Jackson, GR;Wiedau-Pazos, M;Sang, TK;Wagle, N;Brown, CA;Massachi, S;Geschwind, DH
Journal: NEURON, 34: (4) 509-519 MAY 16 2002
Addresses:
Univ Calif Los Angeles, Sch Med, Dept Neurol, Neurogenet Program, 710 Westwood Plaza, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA.
Univ Calif Los Angeles, Sch Med, Dept Neurol, Neurogenet Program, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA.


ST:  Why do you think your paper is highly cited?

It provides in vivo evidence that phosphorylation of tau is crucial to its ability to form neurofibrillary tangles and abnormal filaments. The use of the Drosophila transgenic system to study of tau biology is relatively new, and this paper is a new twist on the prior fly papers. The paper establishes an in vivo bioassay for testing candidate neuroprotective tau kinase inhibitors, so it attracted interest from the drug discovery folks.

ST:  Does it describe a new discovery or new methodology that's useful to others? 

The "discovery" is not exactly new but is an in vivo confirmation of in vitro data. The paper does describe a means of enhancing tau pathology in flies that makes it more relevant to Alzheimer's disease and other tauopathies, so will likely be useful to other investigators interested in evaluating potential tau neuroprotective agents.

ST:  Could you summarize the significance of your paper in layman's terms?

The paper shows that structures resembling the abnormal neurofibrillary tangles found in Alzheimer's disease can be produced in the simple fruit fly by expressing human tau in combination with the tau kinase GSK-3β; thus the paper established a model system useful in genetic and drug screens to find new treatments for the tau-based lesions of Alzheimer's disease

ST:  How did you become involved in this research?

I have a longstanding interest in using Drosophila to model human neurodegenerative diseases. The tau study was part of collaboration with another colleague at UCLA, Dan Geshwind, who has been studying tauopathies for a number of years.End

George R. Jackson, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Neurology
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Los Angeles, CA, USA

View the special topic of Alzheimer's Disease.

Return to Emerging Research Fronts | Return to Special Topics main menu
  

ESI Special Topics, April 2003
Citing URL: http://www.esi-topics.com/erf/2003/april03-GeorgeJackson.html
ScienceWatch.com - Tracking Trends and Perfomance in Basic Research
Go to the new ScienceWatch.com
Write to the Webmaster with questions/comments. Terms of Usage.
The Research Services Group of Thomson Scientific |
(c) 2008 The Thomson Corporation.