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Updated: Feb 10, 2026

Author Spotlight: A Computational Approach to Decipher Amino Acid Preferences in Multispecific Protein-Protein Interactions
Published on: January 26, 2024
The distinct structural preferences of tau protein repeat domains
Xuhua Li1, Xuewei Dong, Guanghong Wei
1Department of Physics, State Key Laboratory of Surface Physics, Key Laboratory for Computational Physical Science (Ministry of Education), Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures (Nanjing), Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, People's Republic of China. ghwei@fudan.edu.cn.
None:
The tau fibrillar structures from the brain of an Alzheimer's patient have a core with a C-shaped motif of the third and fourth repeat domains (R3-R4). Our simulations indicated that the C-shaped motif is only stable for R3-R4, while R1-R2 tends to be linear in shape. These two structural motifs appear in the most stable K18 protofilament. Heparin can further stabilize the C-shaped R3-R4 motif, but not other repeats.
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