Microscale structural model of Alzheimer Aβ(1-40) amyloid fibril

• Main Authors: Paparcone, Raffaella (Contributor), Buehler, Markus J (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics (Contributor), Buehler, Markus J. (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: American Institute of Physics (AIP), 2013-02-28T19:48:56Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

Amyloid fibril formation and characterization are crucial due to their association with severe degenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, type II diabetes, and Parkinson's disease. Here we present an atomistic-based multiscale analysis, utilized to predict the structure of Alzheimer Aβ(1-40) fibrils. Our study provides a structural model of amyloid fibers with lengths of hundreds of nanometers at atomistic resolution. We report a systematic analysis of the energies, structural changes and H-bonding for varying fibril lengths, elucidating their size dependent properties. Our model predicts the formation of twisted amyloid microfibers with a periodicity of ≈82 nm, in close agreement with experimental results.
United States. Office of Naval Research (Grant NN00014-08-1-0844)