MAPT and Alzheimer disease: Manczak et al. (2011) have reported the interactions between the Aβ and mitochondrial fission protein DRP1, which increases with the disease progression, demonstrating the important role of Aβ protein in mitophagy. They also found decreased levels of Mfn2 as well as mitophagy in AD patients. In addition, phosphorylated tau (p-tau) was also found to be associated with DRP1 protein and further leads to excessive fragmentation of mitochondria in AD (Manczak and Reddy, 2012).