26 Apr 2006

A study first reported from the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting last November has just been published in the April 19 Journal of Neuroscience. Gunnar Gouras and colleagues at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City describe how intraneuronal amyloid-β interrupts multivesicular body (MVB) sorting by impairing the ubiquitin proteasome system. First author Claudia Almeida and colleagues tracked MVB sorting of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) in neurons from transgenic mice expressing mutant human amyloid-β precursor protein. As Almeida revealed in Washington, intraneuronal Aβ, localized to late endosomes in neurons from these animals, appears to impair EGFR processing in a ubiquitin proteasome system-dependent manner. For full coverage, read our ARF related conference story.—Tom Fagan