Modeling Tauopathy in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.
The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has emerged as a powerful system in which to model human disease. This review focuses on the utility of the fly to model tau-dependent neurodegeneration, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease and related neurodegenerative disorders. I provide a detailed description of fly tauopathy models and summarize a number of studies that demonstrate their ability to recapitulate both primary features of tauopathy, including tau-induced neurodegeneration and phosphorylation, and secondary features, including oxidative stress, cell-cycle activation and changes in the actin cytoskeleton. Important genetic and biochemical insights are discussed, and future directions proposed.
Khurana
Vikram
V
Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women's Hospitals, Boston, MA 02115, USA. vkhurana@partners.org
D000818:Animals; D054910:Compound Eye, Arthropod / Q000473:pathology; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics*; D006801:Humans; D008870:Microtubules / Q000378:metabolism; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D010766:Phosphorylation; D016875:tau Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology*
D016875:tau Proteins