Tau dysfunction in the basal ganglia of a mouse model of Tauopathy related to PSP

DAMIANICH, ANA; SARTOR, MANUELA; ESPINDOLA, SONIA LORENA; AVALE, MARÍA ELENA

Berlin

Congreso; 20TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF PARKINSON'S DISEASE AND MOVEMENT DISORDERS; 2016

International Parkinson and Movement Disorders Society

Microtubule-associated protein TAU is expressed in neurons and involved in microtubule polymerization and axonal transport. Tauopathies are neurodegenerative diseases involving abnormal TAU metabolism, that leads to the deposition of insoluble aggregates of hyperphosphorilated TAU. Progressive Supranuclear Palsy (PSP) is a tauopathy mainly affecting the basal ganglia, thus leading to early PD symptoms. The pathological mechanisms of tauopathies have been extensively studied using transgenic mice models, mostly to analyze cognitive decline. Much less has been investigated about the role of normal and pathological Tau in the basal ganglia of those models. In this work, we investigated motor phenotypes and neurochemical changes in the striatum and Substantia Nigra pars compacta (SNpc) of mice lacking Tau (TauKO), and in a transgenic mouse model of tauopathy (hTAU mice3 ) expressing human TAU in a TauKO background.