Protein Fibrillation Studied with Qcm-d

The ability of certain polypeptides to aggregate into long, thin fibrils called amyloid structures is associated with multiple protein folding disorders and is also a major problem in biotechnological and pharmaceutical applications. Here, QCM-D has been used to monitor the changes in thickness and viscoelastic properties of multilayer amyloid deposition in situ for the first time. This provides novel insights into the kinetics of protein fibrillation which other techniques cannot provide.