Fig. 3

GVBs are associated with pathological tau accumulation in tauopathy brain. a–d Human post-mortem hippocampal tissue was analysed by immunofluorescence staining for the phosphorylated tau marker AT8, the GVB marker CK1δ and the neuron-specific dendritic marker MAP2. a Representative single plane confocal images of neurons without tau pathology or GVBs (tau−/GVB−) and neurons containing GVBs with (phenotype 1) and without (phenotypes 2 and 3) visible tau accumulations (tau?/GVB+). Separate channels are shown in greyscale, MAP2-based somatic mask is delineated in red and merged images show AT8 (green) and pPERK (magenta). b AT8 and merge from a at higher intensity to visualise low abundant tau accumulation in phenotypes 2 and 3. c Single-cell quantification of somatic pathological tau accumulation of tau−/GVB− (grey) and tau?/GVB+ (pink) neurons shown in a density plot as Log2-transformed corrected mean AT8 immunofluorescence intensity. N=4 patients, n=151 and 199 for tau−/GVB− and tau?/GVB+ populations, respectively. ****p < 0.0001, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test for not normally distributed data. d Corrected maximum AT8 intensity of GVB+ neurons with a Log2-transformed corrected mean tau intensity overlapping with that of GVB− neurons (left of the dotted line in c). Data points represent values from individual neurons. ****p < 0.0001, non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean (SEM)