Caspase-cleavage of tau is an early event in Alzheimer disease tangle pathology
J. Clin. Invest. Robert A. Rissman, et al. 114:121 doi:10.1172/JCI20640 [Go to this article.]

Figure 1
Executioner caspases cleave tau at D421. (A) Recombinant human tau40 (Calbiochem) treated with various caspases was separated by SDS-PAGE and stained with Coomassie blue. Treatment with caspase-3 (C3) and caspase-7 (C7) resulted in a 2-kDa shift (arrowhead) relative to full-length tau (FL), while treatment with caspase-1 (C1), -4 (C4), -5 (C5), -8 (C8), or -10 (C10) did not (arrow). (B) Western blot analysis confirmed the specificity of polyclonal antibody (α-ΔTau) to D421 caspase-cleaved tau. α-ΔTau recognized caspase-3– and caspase-7–cleaved tau, but not uncleaved tau. (C) Executioner caspases remove the C-terminal epitope of tau that is recognized by antibody T46. Full-length and caspase-cleaved tau was probed with mAb T46.