Amyloid fibrils are fibrous -structures that derive from abnormal folding and assembly of peptides and proteins. Despite a wealth of structural studies on amyloids, the nature of the amyloid structure remains elusive; possible connections to natural, -structured fibrous motifs have been suggested. In this work we focus on understanding amyloid structure and formation from sequences of a natural, -structured fibrous protein. We show that short peptides (25 to 6 amino acids) corresponding to repetitive sequences from the adenovirus fiber shaft have an intrinsic capacity to form amyloid fibrils as judged by electron microscopy, Congo Red binding, infrared spectroscopy, and x-ray fiber diffraction. In the presence of the globular C-terminal domain of the protein that acts as a trimerization motif, the shaft sequences adopt a triple-stranded, -fibrous motif. We discuss the possible structure and arrangement of these sequences within the amyloid fibril, as compared with the one adopted within the native structure. A 6-amino acid peptide, corresponding to the last -strand of the shaft, was found to be sufficient to form amyloid fibrils. Structural analysis of these amyloid fibrils suggests that perpendicular stacking of -strand repeat units is an underlying common feature of amyloid formation.
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