Dataset Information

Self-assembly of the full-length amyloid A?42 protein in dimers.

ABSTRACT: The self-assembly of amyloid (A?) proteins into nano-aggregates is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD) development, yet the mechanism of how disordered monomers assemble into aggregates remains elusive. Here, we applied long-time molecular dynamics simulations to fully characterize the assembly of A?42 monomers into dimers. Monomers undergo conformational changes during their interaction, but the resulting dimer structures do not resemble those found in fibril structures. To identify natural conformations of dimers among a set of simulated ones, validation approaches were developed and applied, and a subset of dimer conformations were characterized. These dimers do not contain long ?-strands that are usually found in fibrils. The dimers are stabilized primarily by interactions within the central hydrophobic regions and the C-terminal regions, with a contribution from local hydrogen bonding. The dimers are dynamic, as evidenced by the existence of a set of conformations and by the quantitative analyses of the dimer dissociation process.

SUBMITTER: Zhang Y

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5114164 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Self-assembly of the full-length amyloid Aβ42 protein in dimers.

Zhang Yuliang Y Hashemi Mohtadin M Lv Zhengjian Z Lyubchenko Yuri L YL

Nanoscale 20161006 45

The self-assembly of amyloid (Aβ) proteins into nano-aggregates is a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease (AD) development, yet the mechanism of how disordered monomers assemble into aggregates remains elusive. Here, we applied long-time molecular dynamics simulations to fully characterize the assembly of Aβ42 monomers into dimers. Monomers undergo conformational changes during their interaction, but the resulting dimer structures do not resemble those found in fibril structures. To identify natural ...[more]

PMID: 27714140

Similar Datasets

Project description:Accumulation of amyloid-? peptides is a dominant feature in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease; however, it is not clear how individual amyloid-? species accumulate and affect other neuropathological and clinical features in the disease. Thus, we compared the accumulation of N-terminally truncated amyloid-? and full-length amyloid-?, depending on disease stage as well as brain area, and determined how these amyloid-? species respectively correlate with clinicopathological features of Alzheimer's disease. To this end, the amounts of amyloid-? species and other proteins related to amyloid-? metabolism or Alzheimer's disease were quantified by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) or theoretically calculated in 12 brain regions, including neocortical, limbic and subcortical areas from Alzheimer's disease cases (n = 19), neurologically normal elderly without amyloid-? accumulation (normal ageing, n = 13), and neurologically normal elderly with cortical amyloid-? accumulation (pathological ageing, n = 15). We observed that N-terminally truncated amyloid-?42 and full-length amyloid-?42 accumulations distributed differently across disease stages and brain areas, while N-terminally truncated amyloid-?40 and full-length amyloid-?40 accumulation showed an almost identical distribution pattern. Cortical N-terminally truncated amyloid-?42 accumulation was increased in Alzheimer's disease compared to pathological ageing, whereas cortical full-length amyloid-?42 accumulation was comparable between Alzheimer's disease and pathological ageing. Moreover, N-terminally truncated amyloid-?42 were more likely to accumulate more in specific brain areas, especially some limbic areas, while full-length amyloid-?42 tended to accumulate more in several neocortical areas, including frontal cortices. Immunoprecipitation followed by mass spectrometry analysis showed that several N-terminally truncated amyloid-?42 species, represented by pyroglutamylated amyloid-?11-42, were enriched in these areas, consistent with ELISA results. N-terminally truncated amyloid-?42 accumulation showed significant regional association with BACE1 and neprilysin, but not PSD95 that regionally associated with full-length amyloid-?42 accumulation. Interestingly, accumulations of tau and to a greater extent apolipoprotein E (apoE, encoded by APOE) were more strongly correlated with N-terminally truncated amyloid-?42 accumulation than those of other amyloid-? species across brain areas and disease stages. Consistently, immunohistochemical staining and in vitro binding assays showed that apoE co-localized and bound more strongly with pyroglutamylated amyloid-?11-x fibrils than full-length amyloid-? fibrils. Retrospective review of clinical records showed that accumulation of N-terminally truncated amyloid-?42 in cortical areas was associated with disease onset, duration and cognitive scores. Collectively, N-terminally truncated amyloid-?42 species have spatiotemporal accumulation patterns distinct from full-length amyloid-?42, likely due to different mechanisms governing their accumulations in the brain. These truncated amyloid-? species could play critical roles in the disease by linking other clinicopathological features of Alzheimer's disease.

Dataset Information

Self-assembly of the full-length amyloid A?42 protein in dimers.

Publications

Self-assembly of the full-length amyloid Aβ42 protein in dimers.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure