2,600-year-old brain preserved with protein folding

The 2,600-year-old Heslington brain, discovered in 2008 near York in the UK, was likely so well-preserved due to tightly folded brain proteins, finds a new UCL-led study. The brain matter was the only soft tissue that remained in the skull, which dated from around 673-482 BCE. The new findings, published in Journal of the Royal Society Interface , suggest that the first few months after the person's death may have been key to the extraordinary degree of brain preservation. In absence of any experimental evidence it is less likely, but still possible, that a yet unknown disease may have altered the brain proteins prior to death. "The manner of this individual's death, or subsequent burial, may have enabled the brain's long term preservation," said the study's lead author Dr Axel Petzold (UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology). Dr Petzold was interested in studying this brain as he had spent years pioneering research in two types of filaments in the brain - neurofilaments and glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) - which act like scaffolds to hold brain matter together (much like the scaffold in a historic building), and he suspected that the proteins may have played a key role. He and his team found that both these filament types were still present in the Heslington brain, suggesting they were involved in keeping the brain matter together.