CUR - The Council on Undergraduate Research

Detection of Post-Translation Modifications of Tau Protein in Alzheimer's Disease Using a Phage Display Approach

Stephanie Jones and Dr. Rodney Guttmann, Department of Biology, University of West Florida, 11000 University Pkwy, Pensacola FL, 32514

According to a 2018 study in the Alzheimer’s & Dementia journal, Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is projected to affect 13.9 million people by 2060 (Matthews et al., 2018).  With such a staggering statistic, it’s unfortunate that there remains no treatment or cure for AD. As a consequence, biomarkers for AD are being studied to accelerate the development of diagnostic procedures for earlier and more accurate detection. Current research suggests that biological alterations of microtubule-associated protein tau occur in the preclinical stage of AD and were correspondingly chosen as the biomarker of interest for this study. The aim of this study was to isolate phage candidates capable of detecting post-translational modifications (PTM) of tau specific to the pathological progression of AD. A bio-panning phage display technique, utilizing the Ph.D.-12 phage display library and samples of CSF from non-AD and clinically diagnosed AD patients was used. The methods entailed incubation of the phage library into tau-coated wells of CSF, and washing, eluting, and amplifying the bound phage. Individual clones were isolated and sequenced. Final testing used ELISAs to quantify the extent of binding, comparing AD vs non-AD control subjects. Preliminary results suggest that selected clones within the 12-mer phage library show differential binding affinity for AD CSF samples with potential research and clinical use. Ongoing studies are ensuing to validate initial candidate phage for the ability to selectively identify AD subjects based on their tau PTM profile.

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