Thermostability of lysozyme amyloid fibrils

Abstract

Ordered protein aggregates, amyloid fibrils, are a marker of many serious diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, prion diseases, etc. At present, special attention is paid to the study of external influences that can affect the structure and stability of mature amyloid fibrils, which may be in demand in the development of approaches to the therapy of amyloidosis, as well as in the creation of new high-strength materials on the basis of these protein aggregates. An external factor, the influence of which on fibrils was studied in this work, was temperature denaturation. It was shown that heating lysozyme amyloid fibrils to 60 °C does not lead to their degradation, but leads only to a reversible increase in the intramolecular mobility of amyloid-forming proteins, but does not change their morphology. At the same time, boiling of lysozyme amyloids leads to their irreversible degradation, which occurs at least 5 days after exposure: fibrils that form larger clusters change their secondary structure, and fibrils with a lesser degree of clustering are divided into separate fibers. Obtained data about the factors that change the stability and structure of amyloids can be applied in biotechnology for creating new high-strength nanomaterials on their basis.