Paris - Alzheimer's disease, the terrifying ravaging of the human brain, is caused by a rogue protein that splits, according to research reported in Thursday's issue of Nature, the British scientific weekly.
Alzheimer's, manifested by progressive forgetfulness and finally dementia, is a disease in which brain cells are decimated by fibrous tangles, called tau, that clump together.
What causes the clumping is a process called phosphorylation, triggered by enzymes.
US scientists have now found that a protein, known by its number as p35, is to blame, Nature reports.
A split, truncated form of p35, called p25, causes a particular enzyme, cyclin-dependent kinase 5 (Cdk 5) to proliferate unchecked and cause the tangles to weld together.
The research, led by Tsai Li-Huei of Harvard Medical School, Boston, highlights a path towards an eventual cure or treatment, analysts said.
"Answers will come with time," either by preventing the splitting of p35 or inhibiting the spread of Cdk 5, Ekhard Mandelkow, of Germany's Max-Planck-Unit for Structural Molecular Biology in Hamburg, wrote in a commentary. - Sapa-AFP