Literature: A-K ; L-Z ; subject area
Compiled by: Julian Thorpe
About this Site
 | An interest in one particular protein,
Pin1
- through a collaboration with two of my colleagues here
(Stuart Rulten
and
John Kay
) - has led me into the field of Alzheimer's disease (AD). The development
in this laboratory of a novel TEM labelling
method
utilising Pin1 and the revelation of the involvement of Pin1 in
AD (Lu et al., 1999a) came fortuitously together at almost the
same time. |
| It would appear that Pin1 brings together many facets of
AD , having an involvement in
tangle formation
, along with probable involvements in
APP proteolysis
(and thence plaque
formation), the spurious up-regulation of
cell cycle events
, apoptosis
and
dysregulation of the Notch and Wnt pathways
(via its interaction with beta-catenin). |
| This site was put together initially for my own
benefit as, although I am an experienced electron microscopist,
I was new to the area of AD research and piecing this site together served
as a means for me to begin to understand the range, complexity and interactions
of the various aspects of the disease. |
| The general layout of the site is an
attempt to group research findings into theme areas and then to show their
inter-relationships via links. |
| At present this site will probably appeal to researchers
, as one of the key features will be a progressively growing references
section (which are also grouped into theme areas). However, I hope also
to interest the lay person eventually with attempts to describe some of the
key cell biological processes in an accessible style. |
| I have called this site a 'Review', but perhaps
a '3-Dimensional Review' is what I am hoping to achieve.
Please let me explain. When we read standard (printed text) review
articles one normally reads them 'linearly' - by that I mean that we
read them from the start through to the end. My experience in practise
though is that some particular part of the review catches your attention,
so you check out a cited reference and then you want to explore that avenue
for a while before getting back to the 'linear thread' of the review. By
its very nature the internet allows us to do this - we can delve deeper
and deeper into a specific aspect and then, merely by using the 'back' button,
resurface from that particular 'tunnel of interest' and carry on until
the next topic that grabs our attention. This is what I am trying to achieve
with this site. |
| Of course, AD is too complex for anyone to cover
every angle, and that is why I will unashamedly use links
to other sites within mine. I see no reason to try and duplicate material
which is already covered in excellent fashion elsewhere. |