Tau is toxic to neurons, but exactly how is not crystal clear. A new study in the August 23 Neuron suggests that tau overexpression indirectly elongates mitochondria, which then malfunction and cause ...

Harvard researchers have expressed the wildtype and mutant forms of human tau protein in Drosophila, creating a new model for one aspect of Alzheimer’s disease pathology as well as for tauopathies. In ...

Goldilocks was on to something when she preferred everything "just right." Harvard Medical School researchers have found that when it comes to the length of mitochondria, the power-producing ...

The findings are reported by Vik Khurana, Mel Feany, and colleagues from Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and the Burnham Institute. Neurons in the brain generally do not divide.

A fruit fly model of a rare, neurodegenerative disease is helping researchers trace the series of steps that lead to neuronal cell death. Damage to astrocytes - star-shaped cells found in the brain ...

Fly Model of Parkinson's Disease With genome projects finishing at an ever quickening pace, many new animal models of human disease are being developed. A very promising one is a Drosophila version of ...