The ordered assembly of a small number of proteins into amyloid filaments is central to age-related neurodegenerative diseases. Tau is the most commonly affected of these proteins. In sporadic diseases, assemblies of tau form in a stochastic manner in certain brain regions, from where they appear to spread in a deterministic way, giving rise to disease symptoms. Over the past decade, multiple lines of evidence have shown that assembled tau behaves like a prion. More recently, electron cryo-microscopy of tau filaments has shown that distinct conformers are present in different diseases, with no inter-individual variation for a given disease.

中文翻译：

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Tau蛋白病和the病毒概念。

将少量蛋白质有序组装成淀粉样蛋白丝对于与年龄相关的神经退行性疾病至关重要。Tau是最常见的这些蛋白质。在偶发性疾病中，tau的集合体在某些大脑区域中以随机方式形成，它们似乎以确定性的方式从那里扩散，从而引起疾病症状。在过去的十年中，多种证据表明，组装好的tau的行为像a病毒。最近，tau细丝的电子冷冻显微镜显示，不同疾病中存在明显的构象异构体，对于给定疾病没有个体间差异。