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 provide...

Long-term behavioral effects, changes in learning and memory functions and aberrations of cholinergic fibers projecting to the parietal cortex were investigated after bilateral injections of beta-amyloid(Phe(SO3H)24)25-35 peptide in rat nucleus basalis magnocellularis (nbm). The beta-amyloid peptide used in these experiments contained the original beta-amyloid 25-35 sequence which was coupled t...

RATIONALE The prevalence of Alzheimer's disease is increased in people with Down syndrome. The pathology appears much earlier than in the general population, suggesting a predisposition to develop Alzheimer's disease. Down syndrome results from trisomy of human chromosome 21, leading to overexpression of possible Alzheimer's disease candidate genes, such as amyloid precursor protein gene. To be...

The Src-homology region 3 domain of chicken alpha-spectrin (Spc-SH3) is a small two-state folding protein, which has never been described to form amyloid fibrils under any condition investigated so far. We show here that the mutation of asparagine 47 to alanine at the distal loop, which destabilises similarly the native and folding transition states of the domain, induces the formation of amylo...

Rpb5, a subunit shared by the three yeast RNA polymerases, combines a eukaryotic N-terminal module with a globular C-end conserved in all non-bacterial enzymes. Conditional and lethal mutants of the moderately conserved eukaryotic module showed that its large N-terminal helix and a short motif at the end of the module are critical in vivo. Lethal or conditional mutants of the C-terminal globe a...

Amyloid beta-protein (Abeta) oligomers may be the proximate neurotoxins in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Recently, to elucidate the oligomerization pathway, we studied Abeta monomer folding and identified a decapeptide segment of Abeta, (21)Ala-(22)Glu-(23)Asp-(24)Val-(25)Gly-(26)Ser-(27)Asn-(28)Lys-(29)Gly-(30)Ala, within which turn formation appears to nucleate monomer folding. The turn is stabil...

Protein folding/misfolding in vivo takes place in a highly crowded and confined environment. Such crowded environment can possibly lead to fewer water molecules surrounding a protein of interest than that seen under in vitro conditions wherein typically dilute aqueous solutions are used. When considering the aforesaid cellular characteristics, such as water depletion and macromolecular crowding...

the study was undertaken to answer the question that how many patients with pigmentation of back and arms actually have amyloid deposits in pathology. 44 patients presenting with diffuse pigmentation of back and arms (dpoba) were selected. skin biopsies were performed in all cases from the affected sites. on all formalin fixed and paraffin embedded specimens, the following histochemical stains ...