Water May Play a Hidden Role in the Spread of Alzheimer’s Disease. The Movement of Toxic Amyloid-Beta Proteins Found That Water-Related Processes May Help Explain How Alzheimer’s Pathology Spreads Between Brain Cells, Potentially Revealing a New Mechanism Behind Disease Progression.

A PNAS study by teams at Northwestern University and UC Santa Barbara found that hydrophobic hot spots on tau are pinned by water; once the water cap is released, tau molecules can link to each other and form rigid fibrils. In vitro NMR and molecular dynamics results with mutant tau (P301L) show that blocking this hot spot interrupts templated tau aggregation.