Are Alzheimer neurofibrillary tangles insoluble polymers?

The two methods currently available for the bulk isolation of Alzheimer tangles of paired helical filaments (PHF) are based on a brief treatment of a neuronal-enriched preparation with sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) (Method I) and on heating of whole brain homogenate with SDS and beta-mercaptoethanol (Method II). PHF were isolated from the same Alzheimer brain by these two methods, subjected to SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis and immuno-labelled with monoclonal antibodies to PHF after transferring from the gel to nitrocellulose paper. The PHF isolated by method I revealed the presence of 45 kilodalton to 62 kilodalton PHF polypeptides, whereas the PHF isolated by method II were excluded from the gel. However, PHF isolated by both methods were digested with proteinase-K, though the degradation of PHF of method I was considerably more rapid than that of PHF isolated by method II. These findings should establish that the solubility of PHF might depend on the methods employed for their isolation and that they might not be insoluble polymers of covalently crosslinked polypeptides which accumulate irreversibly in the brain of patients with Alzheimer disease.