W-Tau, a new tau human-specific splicing isoform generated by intron retention, has been recently described. This isoform contains an 18-residue unique sequence corresponding to the translation of the retained region of intron 12. In this work, we have described that such 18-amino-acid peptide from the retained intron 12 can inhibit tau and β amyloid peptides aggregation under in vitro conditions. This inhibitory function is also present in smaller fragments of the 18-residue peptide.
Keywords: aggregation; amyloid peptide; new tau isoform; tau isoforms; w-Tau peptide; w-Tau peptide fragments.