%0 Journal Article
%T Rapid Growth of Acetylated A¦Â(16¨C20) into Macroscopic Crystals
%J -
%D 2018
%R https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.8b00448
%X Aberrant assembly of the amyloid-¦Â (A¦Â) is responsible for the development of Alzheimer¡¯s disease, but can also be exploited to obtain highly functional biomaterials. The short A¦Â fragment, KLVFF (A¦Â16¨C20), is crucial for A¦Â assembly and considered to be an A¦Â aggregation inhibitor. Here, we show that acetylation of KLVFF turns it into an extremely fast self-assembling molecule, reaching macroscopic (i.e., mm) size in seconds. We show that KLVFF is metastable and that the self-assembly can be directed toward a crystalline or fibrillar phase simply through chemical modification, via acetylation or amidation of the peptide. Amidated KLVFF can form amyloid fibrils; we observed folding events of such fibrils occurring in as little as 60 ms. The ability of single KLVFF molecules to rapidly assemble as highly ordered macroscopic structures makes it a promising candidate for applications as a rapid-forming templating material
%U https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsnano.8b00448