Intermediate filament–associated diseases

Intermediate filaments (IFs) are one of the three major fibrillar cytoplasmic elements that make up the cytoskeleton. Cytoskeletal IFs in distinct cell types are formed from different members of a large family of proteins, the IF protein family, which also includes proteins that are present in the nucleus, where they are the main component of the nucleoskeleton. As discussed in this Review series, roles have been revealed for IFs in more than 80 human tissue-specific diseases.