Amyloid fibrils and amorphous aggregates are two types of aberrant aggregates associated with protein misfolding diseases. Although they differ in morphology, the two forms are often treated indiscriminately. β(2)-microglobulin (β2m), a protein responsible for dialysis-related amyloidosis, forms amyloid fibrils or amorphous aggregates depending on the NaCl concentration at pH 2.5. We compared t...

Transmissible amyloid particles called prions are associated with infectious prion diseases in mammals and inherited phenotypes in yeast. All amyloid aggregates can give rise to potentially infectious seeds that accelerate their growth. Why some amyloid seeds are highly infectious prion particles while others are less infectious or even inert, is currently not understood. To address this questi...

Amyloid fibril deposition is associated with over 20 degenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and prion diseases. Although research over the last few years has revealed the morphology and structural features of the amyloid form, knowledge about the thermodynamics of amyloid formation is limited. Here, we report for the first time a direct thermodynamic study of amyloid formati...

Amyloid fibrils are most often associated with their pathological role in diseases like Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, but they are now increasingly being considered for uses in functional engineering materials. They are among the stiffest protein fibers known but they are also rather brittle, and it is unclear how this combination of properties affects the behavior of amyloid str...

Many diseases, including diabetes mellitus and Alzheimer’s disease, are related to accumulation of aggregated (poly)peptides in tissues. These aggregates called amyloids are insoluble and up till now no adequate treatment of amyloid-related diseases is available. One of the most promising therapeutic agents is the polyphenol epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). It has been shown that EGCG inhibit...

Amyloid fibrils were isolated from the tissues of nine patients with amyloidosis in a state of high purity by homogenization of the tissue followed by extraction with distilled water. Physical, chemical, and ultrastructural studies suggest that amyloid fibrils from different individuals resemble each other, but are not identical. In tissue sections as well as by negative staining of isolated fi...

Identifying sequence determinants of fibril-forming proteins is crucial for understanding the processes causing >20 proteins to form pathological amyloid depositions. Our approach to identifying which sequences form amyloid-like fibrils is to screen the amyloid-forming proteins human insulin and 2-microglobulin for segments that form fibrils. Our screen is of 60 sequentially overlapping peptide...

The classical nucleation theory finds the rate of nucleation proportional to the monomer concentration raised to the power, which is the "critical nucleus size," nc. The implicit assumption, that amyloids nucleate in the same way, has been recently challenged by an alternative two-step mechanism, when the soluble monomers first form a metastable aggregate (micelle) and then undergo conversion i...

Amyloids are highly organized protein filaments, rich in β-sheet secondary structures that self-assemble to form dense plaques in brain tissues affected by severe neurodegenerative disorders (e.g. Alzheimer's Disease). Identified as natural functional materials in bacteria, in addition to their remarkable mechanical properties, amyloids have also been proposed as a platform for novel biomateria...

A combined label-free spectroscopic approach at the nanoscale, based on tip-enhanced and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopies, enabled to identify key mechanisms in degradation of amyloid fibrils mediated by gold nanoparticles.