De novo design of a biologically active amyloid. Gallardo, R., Ramakers, M., De Smet, F., Claes, F., Khodaparast, L., Khodaparast, L., Couceiro, J., R., Langenberg, T., Siemons, M., Nyström, S., Young, L., J., Laine, R., F., Young, L., Radaelli, E., Benilova, I., Kumar, M., Staes, A., Desager, M., Beerens, M., Vandervoort, P., Luttun, A., Gevaert, K., Bormans, G., Dewerchin, M., Van Eldere, J., Carmeliet, P., Vande Velde, G., Verfaillie, C., Kaminski, C., F., De Strooper, B., Hammarström, P., Nilsson, K., P., R., Serpell, L., Schymkowitz, J., & Rousseau, F. Science, 354(6313):aah4949, 11, 2016.
De novo design of a biologically active amyloid [pdf]Paper  De novo design of a biologically active amyloid [link]Website  abstract   bibtex   
INTRODUCTION: It has been shown that most proteins possess amyloidogenic segments. How-ever, only about 30 human proteins are known to be involved in amyloid-associated pathologies, and it is still not clear what determines amyloid toxicity in these diseases. We investigated wheth-er an endogenously expressed protein that contains sequences with known amyloidogenic segments, but is not known to aggregate either under normal or pathological conditions, can be induced to do so by seeding it with a peptide comprising the protein's own amyloidogenic fragment. We chose to target the protein vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2) because it has well-characterized biological func-tion and so could provide a model system with which to investigate the relationship between protein loss of function and amyloid toxicity in different cellular contexts.

Downloads: 0