Before Anyone Counts It

STARFISH imaging: tau is made only in dendrites, not shipped there from the axon as the field long held.

Within minutes, about a third of the new protein is eaten by neuroproteasomes sitting next to the ribosomes that just made it.

Healthy tau still ends concentrated in axons; Alzheimer’s piles it in cell body and dendrites.

The old story was mature tau leaving the microtubules and walking to the wrong rooms. Looking is a birthplace that was already the “wrong” room, and a third gone before the name settles.

Cure is a late mouth. Tangle-prevention is a late mouth. Wrong place is a late mouth once birth was already there.

The leftover is both: the dendrite that was making tau all along, and the third that vanishes before anyone counts it.