LMB 365 – Day 336

On day 336 of #LMB365 we recognise Michel Goedert, who started work at the LMB 35 years ago. As a postdoctoral fellow, he spent much of his time learning the rudiments of molecular biology and applying them to the study of Alzheimer’s disease. He became a programme leader in 1988 and has been involved in the work on the molecular nature of the paired helical and straight filaments of Alzheimer’s disease, which showed that tau protein is an integral component of these filaments. This established the concept that the aggregation of tau protein is sufficient to cause neurodegeneration and dementia. Further work showed that the protein alpha-synuclein is the major component of the Lewy pathology, the defining neuropathological characteristic of Parkinson’s disease and dementia with Lewy bodies, and of the filamentous inclusions of multiple system atrophy, a related movement disorder. In recent collaborative work, it was discovered that aggregated human tau proteins exhibit prion-like properties and can exist as distinct conformers. Michel was Head/joint head of the Neurobiology Division from 2003-2016