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-like peptide
1 Department of Life Sciences, Aalborg University, DK-9000 Aalborg, Denmark
2 Department of Biochemistry, Umeå University, S-90187 Umeå, Sweden
Reprint requests to: Mikael Oliveberg, Department of Biochemistry, Umeå University, S-90187 Umeå, Sweden; e-mail: mikael.oliveberg{at}chem.umu.se; fax: 46-90-786-7661.
(RECEIVED December 9, 2003; FINAL REVISION February 4, 2004; ACCEPTED February 9, 2004)
| Abstract |
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-peptide, EM micrographs reveal small crystalline areas (100 to 150 nm, repeating unit 47 Å) scattered in more amorphous material. On a longer time scale, these crystalline areas disappear and are replaced by tangled clusters resembling protofilaments (hours), and eventually by more regular amyloid fibrils of 60 Å to 120 Å diameter (days). The transient population of the crystalline areas indicates the presence of ordered substructures in the early fibrillation process, the diameter of which matches the length of the 14-mer peptide in an extended
-strand conformation. Keywords: peptide aggregation; protein aggregation; amyloid fibrils; peptide crystal; electron microscopy
Article and publication are at http://www.proteinscience.org/cgi/doi/10.1110/ps.03538904.
| Introduction |
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In an attempt to shed more light on the sequence of events occurring during fibrillation, we have studied the evolution of different morphological species during the aggregation of the 14-residue peptide AcNH-RVEKVAILGLMVLA-CONH2 (Tet-p). This peptide has previously been analyzed in the context of a soluble scaffold, the globular protein S6, to provide detailed crystallographic and mechanistic data on its oligomerization behavior (Otzen et al. 2000). The peptide was grafted into the position of an exposed
-strand of the S6 structure (residues 4053) and contains four point mutations relative to wild-type S6. The mutations increase the homology with the hydrophobic C-terminal part of the 42-residue A
-peptide and trigger complex aggregation behavior of S6 without significantly affecting folding or stability of the monomeric protein. Under physiological conditions, the altered S6 construct assembled into tetramers linked by the modified
-strand, and during refolding, the denatured state formed transient aggregates (Fig. 1
; Otzen et al. 2000). The simple recipe for this induced aggregation is the replacement of key charged residues in the original sequence, the so-called aggregation gatekeepers (Otzen et al. 2000), with hydrophobic ones. Analysis of the aggregation behavior of acyl phosphatase mutants (Bucciantini et al. 2002) has subsequently confirmed this observation.
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Over the next few hours and days, the crystalline species is replaced by tangled clusters, leading in the course of several weeks to more regular fibrils of 60 Å to 120 Å in diameter (Fig. 2
). The tangles and fibrils probably corre spond to the protofibrils and fibrils observed for other proteins (Rochet and Lansbury 2000; Volles et al. 2001).
It is not inconceivable that the rapid formation and decay of the preceding crystalline areas have prevented their earlier detection by EM in other systems. However, nanocrystals of the scrapie prion protein, similar in appearance to those of Tet-p, have been reported by Wille and Prusiner (1999). These crystals were crystallized from reverse micelles, and in addition, to detergent their formation required uranyl salts. The detergent conditions under which the protein was stored prior to EM did not allow fibrils to form, and it is not clear whether the nanocrystals would be able to form under conditions in which the prion protein fibrillates.
Judging by its size and morphology, the crystalline intermediate of Tet-p does not appear to be on the most direct pathway to the mature fibrils. More likely it constitutes a dead-end trap. Dead-end traps are not unprecedented in fibrillation. Phase partitioning between soluble precursor elements and a sparingly soluble off-pathway species has previously been proposed to regulate the fibrillation of islet amyloid polypeptide (Padrick and Miranker 2002) by forming a reservoir of precipitated protein that slowly releases monomers for fibrillation. Likewise, oligomeric species that do not lead to fibrillation have been observed during the aggregation of the A
-peptide (Pallitto and Murphy 2001) and immunoglobulin light-chain (Souillac et al. 2002). The transient A
oligomers reached a maximum occupancy after 40 min of aggregation and were detected by fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (Tjernberg et al. 1999).
Upon closer examination of Figure 2
, it is apparent that the tangled clusters in several cases spread out from the crystalline area as lateral or radial outgrowth. This behavior hints at the possibility that the crystal surface acts as template for seeding more linear growth of fibrillar structures. In support of this scenario, Serrano and coworkers (L. Serrano, pers. comm.) have recently observed a similar hairlike growth from spherical particles early in the aggregation process of a de novo designed peptide.
Zhu and coworkers (2002) have recently reported that surface-catalyzed fibril formation of SMA (on mica grids) proceeds via preformed "amorphous cores" from which the fibrillar growth originates. These SMA cores appear by AFM after 4 h of incubation and could well be related to the nanocrystalline species formed by the Tet-p peptide. Moreover, their size (100 to 200 nm) matches well the nanocrystalline species (100 to 150 nm).
What is then the nature of the 50 Å substructures forming the crystalline areas? In an earlier time-resolved study of the full-length A
-peptide, Harper and coworkers (1999) observed that a spherical species of similar dimensions (diameter ~40 Å) accumulated early in the aggregation process and then seemed to coalesce into protofibrils. More recently, the same group reported that the A
-peptide may also produce ring-like assemblies with a diameter of 70 Å to 100 Å resembling
barrels (Lashuel et al. 2002). An attractive feature of barrel-like structures as early intermediates in protein aggregation is that they, at least conceptually, provide a simple rationale for toxicity. In analogy with cytolytic toxins,
barrels may form membrane-spanning pores, leading to erroneous permeabilization and cell dysfunction (Gouaux 1997). For example, the membrane-spanning parts of the barrel-forming toxins
-hemolysin (Gouaux 1998) and aerolysin (Rossjohn et al. 1998) both have diameters ~100 Å, and individual membrane-bound
-barrels, such as the 22-stranded FepA transporter (Buchanan et al. 1999), have diameters ~40 Å. Consistently, protofilaments of A
and
-synuclein, but not their mature fibrils (Volles et al. 2001; Volles and Lansbury 2002), have been observed to permeabilize lipid vesicles and display pore-like activity in vitro. The crystalline areas in Figure 2
are currently too small to be subjected to X-ray analysis, and we do not observe isolated spherical substructures, so the connection of the nanocrystalline array to possible
barrel structures must remain speculative at present. However, we note that the size of the Tet-p substructure (50 Å in both dimensions) is fully consistent with a
barrel with a length corresponding to the extended peptide and a width similar to a membrane-bound
-barrels such as the FepA transporter (~40 Å; Buchanan et al. 1999). Further, it is easy to envisage how such regular barrel structures may organize into flake-like crystals. Even so, it remains to be established whether the Tet-p sub structures are present also in the mature fibrils. If not, both the crystalline areas and the substructures that they are composed of will constitute kinetic traps in the fibrillation process. Such kinetic traps could arise either because of an inherent consequence of the aggregation energy landscape (cf. intermediates in protein folding; Dill and Chan 1997), or because the bulk transport of peptides is too slow to directly allow the formation of the thermodynamically most advantageous species (cf. spinodal decomposition; Schmeltzer et al. 1999; Vaiana et al. 2003). Thus, the convergent evidence that toxicity arises during the early aggregation events need not automatically imply the involvement of fibril precursors or lack of cooperativity in the fibrillation process. It is equally possible that the adverse gain of function arises from off-pathway conformations that are kinetically trapped.
| Materials and methods |
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| Acknowledgments |
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The publication costs of this article were defrayed in part by payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 USC section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.
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