title: Understanding amyloid aggregation by statistical analysis of atomic force microscopy images.
abstract: The aggregation of proteins is central to many aspects of daily life, including food processing, blood coagulation, eye cataract formation disease and prion-related neurodegenerative infections. However, the physical mechanisms responsible for amyloidosis-the irreversible fibril formation of various proteins that is linked to disorders such as Alzheimer's, Creutzfeldt-Jakob and Huntington's diseases-have not yet been fully elucidated. Here, we show that different stages of amyloid aggregation can be examined by performing a statistical polymer physics analysis of single-molecule atomic force microscopy images of heat-denatured beta-lactoglobulin fibrils. The atomic force microscopy analysis, supported by theoretical arguments, reveals that the fibrils have a multistranded helical shape with twisted ribbon-like structures. Our results also indicate a possible general model for amyloid fibril assembly and illustrate the potential of this approach for investigating fibrillar systems.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Vivante, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Jozef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Adamcik
authors.forename: Jin-Mi
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Jung
authors.forename: Jérôme
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Flakowski
authors.forename: Paolo
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: De Los Rios
authors.forename: Giovanni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Dietler
authors.forename: Raffaele
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Mezzenga
mesh_terms: D000682:Amyloid / Q000737:chemistry / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D000818:Animals; D002417:Cattle; D007782:Lactoglobulins / Q000737:chemistry / Q000648:ultrastructure; D018625:Microscopy, Atomic Force / Q000379:methods*; D015233:Models, Statistical; D049329:Nanostructures / Q000737:chemistry / Q000648:ultrastructure*; D011489:Protein Denaturation; D055503:Protein Multimerization
chemical_list: D000682:Amyloid; D007782:Lactoglobulins
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