Although tau is highly conserved across most of the protein, critical differences exist between human and rat tau, particularly in the N-terminal region of the protein.21 Previously, it had been demonstrated that the N-terminal region of tau is critical for the early events associated with tau misfolding during neurodegenerative processes.30 As such, constructs encoding rodent tau were used exclusively for these studies assessing the role of Ser-214 phosphorylation in the generation of toxic tau following infection of primary cultured rat PMVECs. This evidence concerns the gene MAPT and infection.