Environmental Control of Amyloid Polymorphism by Modulation of Hydrodynamic Stress

Abstract

The phenomenon of amyloid polymorphism is a key feature of protein aggregation. Unravelling this phenomenon is of great significance for understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms associated with neurodegenerative diseases and for the development of amyloid-based functional biomaterials. However, the understanding of the molecular origins and the physicochemical factors modulating amyloid polymorphs remains challenging. Herein, we demonstrate an association between amyloid polymorphism and environmental stress in solution, induced by an air/water interface in motion. Our results reveal that low-stress environments produce heterogeneous amyloid polymorphs, including twisted, helical, and rod-like fibrils, whereas high-stress conditions generate only homogeneous rod-like fibrils. Moreover, high environmental stress converts twisted fibrils into rodlike fibrils both in-pathway and after the completion of mature amyloid formation. These results enrich our understanding of the environmental origin of polymorphism of pathological amyloids and shed light on the potential of environmentally controlled fabrication of homogeneous amyloid biomaterials for biotechnological applications.

Oat Plant Amyloids for Sustainable Functional Materials

“…[ 20 ] The amyloid fibrils were traced by selecting the maximal height in every cross section along the contour of each individual amyloid fibril. [ 32 ] An additional custom‐made script was applied to calculate the maximal height of the twisted fibrils and to group the traced fibrils according to their height in order to further study their morphological properties and persistence length. Persistence length was calculated by fitting the mean‐squared end‐to‐end distance between contour segments.…”

Bottom-up supramolecular assembly in two dimensions

“…25 Environmental factors such as mechanical stress produced at moving air-water interfaces can play an important role in the energetic assembly pathway. 13 The control of the assembly pathway can also have a drastic effect on the size and number of defects of supramolecular 2D assemblies. 26,27 Therefore, all factors affecting the assembly pathway have to be considered when designing a potential monomer for 2D self-assembly.…”

“…8,10 The non-covalent foundation of these systems allows the dynamic exchange of monomers and structural remodelling in response to external conditions (e.g. temperature, pH, and ionic strength), 11 which endows the resulting materials with new functional properties such as selfhealing, 12 polymorphism, 13 or molecular capture and sensing. [14][15][16] Despite the continuous development of new supramolecular 2D materials, there is still a know-how gap in predicting the supramolecular outcome of monomers at the molecular design stage.…”

Amyloid fibril-based membranes for PFAS removal from water

“…For PFOA, first, we treated the probe in the ozone cleaner for 10min and then functionalized it by immersing it in 1 % (3-Aminopropyl)triethoxysilane (APTES) to expose the amine group on the tip, dried by a gentle flow of compressed air. After that, the probe was immersed in the 1 μm/mL PFOA solution for 1 min to immobilize PFOA by interacting with the exposed amine group of APTES on the tip [21][22][23] .…”