The phosphorylation detected in tauopathy brains was well recapitulated in the seeded SH-SY5Y cells (Fig. 3B), which is consistent with the idea that an increase in phosphorylation is one of the PTM events that occurs in the early stages of tauopathy.16,39,40 Most of the phosphorylation, including pT181, pS202 and pT231, is also detected in SH-SY5Y cells expressing full-length tau, suggesting that templated tau seeding in this cellular model is initiated by the presence of the template rather than by phosphorylation (Supplementary Fig. 4A). This evidence concerns the gene MAPT and tauopathy.