Organization of designed nanofibrils assembled from alpha-helical peptides as determined by electron microscopy.

Details

Serval ID
serval:BIB_AE3D33A58E6D
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Organization of designed nanofibrils assembled from alpha-helical peptides as determined by electron microscopy.
Journal
Journal of Peptide Science
Author(s)
Kajava A.V., Potekhin S.A., Corradin G., Leapman R.D.
ISSN
1075-2617
Publication state
Published
Issued date
05/2004
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
10
Number
5
Pages
291-297
Language
english
Abstract
Self-assembling peptides present attractive platforms for engineering materials with controlled nanostructures. Recently, an alpha-helical fibril forming peptide (alphaFFP) was designed that self-assembles into nanofibrils at acid pH. Circular dichroism spectroscopy, electron-microscopy and x-ray fibre diffraction data showed that the most likely structure of alphaFFP fibrils is a five-stranded coiled coil rope. In the present study, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) was used to improve our understanding of the alphaFFP fibril structure. The measurements of fibril mass per length suggest that there are ten alpha-helices in transverse sections of the fibrils. Based on the known data, it is proposed that a predominant fibrillar structure of alphaFFP is a dimer of alpha-helical five stranded protofilaments wrapped around a common axis. It is shown that these structures have an axial dimension of 58 +/- 16 nm and a width of 4 +/- 1 nm. A small number of thin fibrils is also observed in the negative stained preparation and STEM images. The thin fibrils may correspond to the single protofilament.
Keywords
Microscopy, Electron, Scanning, Models, Molecular, Peptide Fragments/chemistry, Peptide Fragments/ultrastructure, Protein Structure, Secondary, Structure-Activity Relationship
Pubmed
Web of science
Create date
24/01/2008 15:55
Last modification date
20/08/2019 16:18
Usage data