, are arguing that the roots of Alzheimer's may begin forming much earlier than previously thought, and result in buildups dubbed "poisonous flowers."
When observing mice lysosomes as their acidic enzymes engaged in their waste removal process, the researchers found that some lysosomes became enlarged when fusing with the waste they're supposed to remove, ultimately forming "flower-like" patterns as they busted out of the cell membranes that housed them and taking over the nucleus.
"Previously," said lead investigator Ju-Hyun Lee in the statement, "the working hypothesis mostly attributed the damage observed in Alzheimer’s disease to what came after amyloid buildup outside of brain cells, not before and from within neurons." "It also explains why so many experimental therapies designed to remove amyloid plaques have failed to stop disease progression," Nixon added, "because the brain cells are already crippled before the plaques fully form outside the cell."