CofActor: A light- and stress-gated optogenetic clustering tool to study disease-associated cytoskeletal dynamics in living cells.

The hallmarks of neurodegenerative diseases, including neural fibrils, reactive oxygen species, and cofilin-actin rods, present numerous challenges in the development of diagnostic tools. Biomarkers such as β-amyloid (Aβ) fibrils and Tau tangles in Alzheimer's disease are accessible only via invasive cerebrospinal fluid assays, and reactive oxygen species can be fleeting and challenging to monitor Although remaining a challenge for detection, the protein-protein interactions underlying these disease-specific biomarkers present opportunities for the engineering of pathology-sensitive biosensors. These tools can be useful for investigating early stage events in neurodegenerative diseases in both cellular and animal models and may lead to clinically useful reagents.