Insight on Research

Benjamin Ryskeldi-Falcon’s group in the LMB’s Neurobiology Division have used cryo-ET to discover that tau filaments are tethered to the membranes of extracellular vesicles in Alzheimer’s disease. These findings introduce membrane tethering of amyloid filaments as a potential target to interfere with their accumulation in disease.

Tetsuo Hasegawa and Menna Clatworthy, in the University of Cambridge’s Molecular Immunity Unit house at the LMB, studied a synovial knee joint, finding porous capillaries which allow access by circulating immune stimuli, which is in turn policed by a blood-joint barrier of macrophages and nociceptor neurons.

An international collaboration, including Greg Jefferis’ group in the LMB’s Neurobiology Division, have published the connectome of the Drosophila fly – the most complex brain to be mapped in its entirety, including 140,000 neurons and over 15 million connections.

Introduction of ultrasound machines has allowed LMB animal technicians to accurately detect pregnancy in mice as early as 5.5 days, which ultimately reduces the number of mice needed for research.

Leo James’ group, in the LMB’s PNAC Division, have worked with Will McEwan’s group at the UK Dementia Research Institute to design two new therapeutics which harnesses cellular machinery to remove tau aggregates, improving motor skills in mice affected by neurodegenerative disease.

Surprising advance to our understanding of neurodegenerative diseases, as Diana Arseni and Benjamin Ryskeldi-Falcon in the LMB’s Neurobiology Division find that frontotemporal lobar degeneration Type C filaments include both annexin A11 and TDP-43 in a unique heteromeric structure.