Putting a spin on it: amyloid aggregation from oligomers to fibrils

Zurlo, E.

Persistent URL of this record https://hdl.handle.net/1887/123273

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Zurlo, E. (2020)

Putting a spin on it: amyloid aggregation from oligomers to fibrils

Doctoral Thesis

This thesis focuses on amyloid proteins, a class of proteins that convert into amyloid fibrils. Such proteins are of high interest because they are related to many of the neurodegenerative diseases. In the brains of patients with neurodegenerative diseases, plaques of β-sheet amyloid aggregates are found, but the mechanism of their formation and their role vis-à-vis the disease are unknown. Aggregation is difficult to study because amyloids are intrinsically disordered proteins that lack an ordered structure in solution. Here we apply electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) as a new technique to better understand the properties of amyloid oligomers and their formation.