Furthermore, tau and other prion-like proteins implicated in neurodegenerative diseases do not only use tunneling nanotubes for transfer but also promote their formation and, therefore, their transfer between cells (Costanzo et al., 2013; Abounit et al., 2016a,b; Tardivel et al., 2016; Rostami et al., 2017). The gene discussed is MAPT; the disease is neurodegenerative disease.