Abstract
Soluble amyloid-β (Aβ) oligomers have become a focal point in the study of Alzheimer’s disease due to their ability to elicit cytotoxicity. A number of recent studies have concentrated on the structural characterization of soluble Aβ oligomers to gain insight into their mechanism of toxicity. Consequently, providing reproducible protocols for the preparation of such oligomers is of utmost importance. The method presented in this chapter details a protocol for preparing an Aβ oligomer, with a primarily disordered secondary structure, without the need for chemical modification or amino acid substitution. Due to the stability of these disordered Aβ oligomers and the reproducibility with which they form, they are amenable for biophysical and high-resolution structural characterization.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Chiti F, Dobson CM (2006) Protein misfolding, functional amyloid, and human disease. Annu Rev Biochem 75:333–366
Mucke L, Selkoe DJ (2012) Neurotoxicity of amyloid β-protein: synaptic and network dysfunction. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Med 2(7):a006338
Benilova I, Karran E, De Strooper B (2012) The toxic Aβ oligomer and Alzheimer’s disease: an emperor in need of clothes. Nat Neurosci 15(3):349–357
Kotler SA, Walsh P, Brender JR, Ramamoorthy A (2014) Differences between amyloid-β aggregation in solution and on the membrane: insights into elucidation of the mechanistic details of Alzheimer’s disease. Chem Soc Rev 43(19):6692–6700
Butterfield SM, Lashuel H (2010) Amyloidogenic protein-membrane interactions: mechanistic insight from model systems. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl 49(33):5628–5654
Jang H et al (2013) Alzheimer’s disease: which type of amyloid-preventing drug agents to employ? Phys Chem Chem Phys 15(23):8868
Chimon S et al (2007) Evidence of fibril-like β-sheet structures in a neurotoxic amyloid intermediate of Alzheimer’s β-amyloid. Nat Struct Mol Biol 14(12):1157–1164
Cohen SIA et al (2015) A molecular chaperone breaks the catalytic cycle that generates toxic Aβ oligomers. Nat Struct Mol Biol 22(3):207–213
Serra-Vidal B et al (2014) Hydrogen/Deuterium Exchange-Protected Oligomers Populated during Aβ Fibril Formation Correlate with Neuronal Cell Death. ACS Chem Biol 9(11):2678–2685
Ladiwala AR et al (2012) Conformational differences between two amyloid β oligomers of similar size and dissimilar toxicity. J Biol Chem 287(29):24765–24773
Ahmed M et al (2010) Structural conversion of neurotoxic amyloid-beta(1-42) oligomers to fibrils. Nat Struct Mol Biol 17(5):561–567
Chimon S, Ishii Y (2005) Capturing intermediate structures of Alzheimer’s beta-amyloid, Abeta(1-40), by solid-state NMR spectroscopy. J Am Chem Soc 127(39):13472–13473
Jan A, Hartley DM, Lashuel H (2010) Preparation and characterization of toxic Abeta aggregates for structural and functional studies in Alzheimer’s disease research. Nat Protoc 5(6):1186–1209
Lopes DHJ, Sinha S, Rosensweig C, Bitan G (2012) Application of photochemical cross-linking to the study of oligomerization of amyloidogenic proteins. Methods Mol Biol 849:11–21
Rosensweig C et al (2012) Preparation of stable amyloid β-protein oligomers of defined assembly order. Methods Mol Biol 849:23–31
Sarkar B et al (2014) Significant structural differences between transient amyloid-β oligomers and less-toxic fibrils in regions known to harbor familial Alzheimer’s mutations. Angew Chemie Int Ed 53(27):6888–6892
Lendel C et al (2014) A Hexameric peptide barrel as building block of amyloid-β protofibrils. Angew Chem Int Ed Engl 53(47):12756–12760
Yu L et al (2009) Structural characterization of a soluble amyloid beta-peptide oligomer. Biochemistry 48(9):1870–1877
Ono K, Condron MM, Teplow DB (2009) Structure-neurotoxicity relationships of amyloid beta-protein oligomers. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 106(35):14745–14750
Luo J, Wärmländer SKTS, Gräslund A, Abrahams JP (2014) Alzheimer peptides aggregate into transient nanoglobules that nucleate fibrils. Biochemistry 53(40):6302–6308
Tycko R (2011) Solid-state NMR studies of amyloid fibril structure. Annu Rev Phys Chem 62:279–299
Schütz AK et al (2015) Atomic-resolution three-dimensional structure of amyloid β fibrils bearing the osaka mutation. Angew Chemie Int Ed 54(1):331–335
Vilar M, Wang L, Riek R (2012) Structural studies of amyloids by quenched hydrogen-deuterium exchange by NMR. Methods Mol Biol 849:185–198
Kotler SA et al (2015) High-resolution NMR characterization of low abundance oligomers of amyloid-β without purification. Sci Rep 5:11811
Sodium Phosphate (2006) Cold Spring Harb Protoc 2006(1):pdb.rec8303
Bitan G, Teplow DB (2005) Preparation of aggregate-free, low molecular weight amyloid-beta for assembly and toxicity assays. Methods Mol Biol 299:3–9
Ryan TM et al (2013) Ammonium hydroxide treatment of Aβ produces an aggregate free solution suitable for biophysical and cell culture characterization. PeerJ 1:e73
Weber DK, Sani M-A, Gehman JD (2014) A routine method for cloning, expressing and purifying Aβ(1-42) for structural NMR studies. Amino Acids 46(10):2415–2426
Zhang TO, Grechko M, Moran SD, Zanni MT (2016) Isotope-Labeled Amyloids via Synthesis, Expression, and Chemical Ligation for Use in FTIR, 2D IR, and NMR Studies. Methods Mol Biol 1345:21–41
Nilsson MR, Nguyen LL, Raleigh DP (2001) Synthesis and purification of amyloidogenic peptides. Anal Biochem 288(1):76–82
Walsh P, Neudecker P, Sharpe S (2010) Structural properties and dynamic behavior of nonfibrillar oligomers formed by PrP(106-126). J Am Chem Soc 132(22):7684–7695
Acknowledgments
Research on amyloid-beta is supported by funds from the National Institutes of Health (AG048934 to A.R.).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature
About this protocol
Cite this protocol
Kotler, S.A., Ramamoorthy, A. (2018). Preparation of Stable Amyloid-β Oligomers Without Perturbative Methods. In: Nilsson, B., Doran, T. (eds) Peptide Self-Assembly. Methods in Molecular Biology, vol 1777. Humana Press, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7811-3_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-7811-3_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Humana Press, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4939-7809-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4939-7811-3
eBook Packages: Springer Protocols