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  4. AFM-Based Single Molecule Techniques: Unraveling the Amyloid Pathogenic Species
 
review article

AFM-Based Single Molecule Techniques: Unraveling the Amyloid Pathogenic Species

Ruggeri, Francesco Simone  
•
Habchi, Johnny
•
Cerreta, Andrea  
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2016
Current Pharmaceutical Design

Background: A wide class of human diseases and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, is due to the failure of a specific peptide or protein to keep its native functional conformational state and to undergo a conformational change into a misfolded state, triggering the formation of fibrillar cross-beta sheet amyloid aggregates. During the fibrillization, several coexisting species are formed, giving rise to a highly heterogeneous mixture. Despite its fundamental role in biological function and malfunction, the mechanism of protein self-assembly and the fundamental origins of the connection between aggregation, cellular toxicity and the biochemistry of neurodegeneration remains challenging to elucidate in molecular detail. In particular, the nature of the specific state of proteins that is most prone to cause cytotoxicity is not established. Methods: In the present review, we present the latest advances obtained by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) based techniques to unravel the biophysical properties of amyloid aggregates at the nanoscale. Unraveling amyloid single species biophysical properties still represents a formidable experimental challenge, mainly because of their nanoscale dimensions and heterogeneous nature. Bulk techniques, such as circular dichroism or infrared spectroscopy, are not able to characterize the heterogeneity and inner properties of amyloid aggregates at the single species level, preventing a profound investigation of the correlation between the biophysical properties and toxicity of the individual species. Conclusion: The information delivered by AFM based techniques could be central to study the aggregation pathway of proteins and to design molecules that could interfere with amyloid aggregation delaying the onset of misfolding diseases.

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Type
review article
DOI
10.2174/1381612822666160518141911
Web of Science ID

WOS:000384726200003

Author(s)
Ruggeri, Francesco Simone  
Habchi, Johnny
Cerreta, Andrea  
Dietler, Giovanni  
Date Issued

2016

Publisher

Bentham Science Publishers

Published in
Current Pharmaceutical Design
Volume

22

Issue

26

Start page

3950

End page

3970

Subjects

Misfolding diseases

•

Alzheimer's disease

•

amyloid

•

protein aggregation

•

single molecule biophysics

•

afm

•

nanomechanical properties

•

infrared nanospectroscopy

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LPMV  
Available on Infoscience
November 21, 2016
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/131324
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