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Mechanisms and rates of nucleation of amyloid fibrils

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Lee, C-T 
Terentjev, EM 

Abstract

The classical nucleation theory finds the rate of nucleation proportional to the monomer concentration raised to the power, which is the critical nucleaus size', n$_{c}$. The implicit assumption, that amyloids nucleate in the same way, has been recently challenged by an alternative two-step mechanism, when the soluble monomers first form a metastable aggregate (micelle), and then undergo conversion into the conformation rich in β-strands that are able to form a stable growing nucleus for the protofilament. Here we put together the elements of extensive knowledge about aggregation and nucleation kinetics, using a specific case of Aβ$_{1-42}$ amyloidogenic peptide for illustration, to find theoretical expressions for the effective rate of amyloid nucleation. We find that at low monomer concentration in solution, and also at low interaction energy between two peptide conformations in the micelle, the nucleation occurs via the classical route. At higher monomer concentration, and a range of other interaction parameters between peptides, the two-step aggregation-conversion' mechanism of nucleation takes over. In this regime, the effective rate of the process can be interpreted as a power of monomer concentration in a certain range of parameters, however, the exponent is determined by a complicated interplay of interaction parameters and is not related to the minimum size of the growing nucleus (which we find to be 7-8 for Aβ1−42).

Description

Keywords

Amyloid, Amyloid beta-Peptides, Kinetics, Models, Chemical, Peptide Fragments, Protein Structure, Secondary, Thermodynamics

Journal Title

Journal of Chemical Physics

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0021-9606
1089-7690

Volume Title

147

Publisher

AIP Publishing
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/J017639/1)
This work has been supported by the Theory of Condensed Matter Critical Mass Grant from EPSRC (EP/J017639).