Crucial mechanisms behind synapse degeneration in Alzheimer’s discovered
A team of neurobiologists from the University of California San Diego (CA, USA) have discovered the main drivers of amyloid beta-associated synapse degeneration and identified a potential therapeutic agent for protecting synapses. In a previous study, Yimin Zou (University of California San Diego) and colleagues revealed that during brain development, highly polarized glutamatergic synapses are assembled by components of the planar cell polarity (PCP) pathway: a powerful signaling pathway that polarizes cell-cell junctions along the tissue plane. The current study, published in Science Advances, utilized super resolution microscopy to precisely locate these PCP signaling components, termed Celsr3, Frizzled3 and Vangl2,...