A critical step of β-amyloid fibril formation is fibril elongation in which amyloid-β monomers undergo structural transitions to fibrillar structures upon their binding to fibril tips. The atomic detail of the structural transitions remains poorly understood. Computational characterization of the structural transitions is limited so far to short Aβ segments (5-10 aa) owing to the long time scal...

The mineral in bone is located primarily within the collagen fibril, and during mineralization the fibril is formed first and then water within the fibril is replaced with mineral. The collagen fibril therefore provides the aqueous compartment in which mineral grows. Although knowledge of the size of molecules that can diffuse into the fibril to affect crystal growth is critical to understandin...

Using implicit solvent molecular dynamics and replica exchange simulations, we study the impact of ibuprofen on the growth of wild-type Abeta fibrils. We show that binding of ibuprofen to Abeta destabilizes the interactions between incoming peptides and the fibril. As a result, ibuprofen interference modifies the free energy landscape of fibril growth and reduces the free energy gain of Abeta p...

objective: alpha-synuclein is a major component of protein plaques in synucleinopathies, particularly parkinson’s disease. the purpose of this study is to assess the inhibitory effects of cuminaldehyde on the fibrillation of alpha-synuclein. methods: alpha-synuclein was expressed in escherichia coli and subsequently purified. for the process of fibrillation, purified protein was incubated at 3...

Phase I of this project demonstrated a new technology for silicon carbide fibril growth that would remove some of the previous impediments to the scale-up to a commercial fibril process. The microwave energy approach was designed to heat only the fibril growth balls, reducing the MTS reaction gas quantities needed to feed the fibril growth process. The continuation of this process development c...

Abstract Structural changes of cellulose microfibrils and microfibril bundles in unmodified spruce cell wall due to drying air were investigated using time-resolved small-angle neutron scattering (SANS). The analysis was supported with dynamic vapor sorption (DVS) measurements quantify the macroscopic kinetics. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations carried out aid understanding molecular-level wo...

Collagen fibril cross-sectional radii show no systematic variation between the interior and the periphery of fibril bundles, indicating an effectively constant rate of collagen incorporation into fibrils throughout the bundle. Such spatially homogeneous incorporation constrains the extracellular diffusion of collagen precursors from sources at the bundle boundary to sinks at the growing fibrils...

This mini-review focuses on the processes and consequences of protein folding and misfolding. The latter process often leads to protein aggregation and precipitation with the aggregates adopting either highly ordered (amyloid fibril) or disordered (amorphous) forms. In particular, the amyloid fibril is discussed because this form has gained considerable notoriety due to its close links to a var...