[nonbel]

I bet if they double stain with anti-amyloid-Beta they will see the staining overlap. They just say they used "antibody raised against proteins obtained from C. glabrata, C. famata, C. albicans, P. betae and S. racemosum", so they don't even know (or want to say) what these antibodies react with...

Amyloids have generic secondary structure (can be created from any amino acid sequence under the right conditions) and yeast produce amyloids. They quite possibly raised antibodies towards yeast amyloids and then stained human amyloids. It is strange they do not report staining these brains for amyloid-Beta, it is an obvious thing to do.

[jschwartzi]

Do the amyloid proteins you'd expect concentrate in similarly-shaped groupings? One claim is that the shape of the stains has fungal morphology. If Amyloid-beta concentrations can have fungal morphology then I would think that might strengthen your claim and weaken the paper's. I'm only an engineer though, so feel free to dismiss me as ignorant of your field. Either way I can see how these findings are not terribly interesting.

[nonbel]

>"One claim is that the shape of the stains has fungal morphology. If Amyloid-beta concentrations can have fungal morphology then I would think that might strengthen your claim and weaken the paper's."

The evidence in the paper consists of a few representative pictures. I have never seen human brain stained for amyloid-beta, but if it stained at all I would bet lots of money that I could find at least one clump with "fungal morphology".

Also, ruling out the other explanations (such as they stained for amyloid) is not the audience's job, it is their job. They are the ones with access to the most detailed information, putting them in the best position to think about various explanations for what could be going on.