Distal enrichment was present after taxol treatment but was suppressed at disease-relevant conditions. The data suggest that (i) dynamic binding of tau to microtubules and diffusion along microtubules and (ii) trapping at the tip of a neurite both contribute to its distribution during development and disease.
Alzheimer's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders share some common features at the cellular level, which are often associated with a change in cytoskeletal dynamics. Live cell imaging has been applied to study various aspects of cell physiology including cytoskeletal dynamics. Recently, fluorescence photoactivation (FPA) has been developed as a novel approach to analyze protein dynamics in living cells with high sensitivity. Here, we describe the application of FPA to determine interactions and mobility of the microtubule-associated protein tau in neurons as an example for a disease-related cytoskeletal protein and discuss further applications of FPA to study cytoskeletal dynamics in neurodegenerative diseases.
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