Engineering amyloid-like assemblies from unstructured peptides via site-specific lipid conjugation

PLoS One. 2014 Sep 10;9(9):e105641. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0105641. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Aggregation of amyloid beta (Aβ) into oligomers and fibrils is believed to play an important role in the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD). To gain further insight into the principles of aggregation, we have investigated the induction of β-sheet secondary conformation from disordered native peptide sequences through lipidation, in 1-2% hexafluoroisopropanol (HFIP) in phosphate buffered saline (PBS). Several parameters, such as type and number of lipid chains, peptide sequence, peptide length and net charge, were explored keeping the ratio peptide/HFIP constant. The resulting lipoconjugates were characterized by several physico-chemical techniques: Circular Dichroism (CD), Attenuated Total Reflection InfraRed (ATR-IR), Thioflavin T (ThT) fluorescence, Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS), solid-state Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy and Electron Microscopy (EM). Our data demonstrate the generation of β-sheet aggregates from numerous unstructured peptides under physiological pH, independent of the amino acid sequence. The amphiphilicity pattern and hydrophobicity of the scaffold were found to be key factors for their assembly into amyloid-like structures.

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acid Sequence
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides / chemistry*
  • Amyloid beta-Peptides / metabolism*
  • Binding Sites
  • Drug Design*
  • Hydrogen-Ion Concentration
  • Hydrophobic and Hydrophilic Interactions
  • Lipid Metabolism*
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Protein Multimerization*
  • Protein Structure, Secondary
  • Substrate Specificity
  • Water / chemistry

Substances

  • Amyloid beta-Peptides
  • Water

Grants and funding

The authors have no support or funding to report.