Title
Nanomechanical Stability of Aβ Tetramers and Fibril-like Structures: Molecular Dynamics Simulations
Date Issued
22 July 2021
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Thu T.T.M.
Tri L.T.M.
Nguyen H.L.
Li M.S.
Lodz University of Technology
Publisher(s)
American Chemical Society
Abstract
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder and one of the main causes of dementia. The disease is associated with amyloid beta (Aβ) peptide aggregation forming initial clusters and then fibril structure and plaques. Other neurodegenerative diseases such as type 2 diabetes, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and Parkinson's disease follow a similar mechanism. Therefore, inhibition of Aβ aggregation is considered an effective way to prevent AD. Recent experiments have provided evidence that oligomers are more toxic agents than mature fibrils, prompting researchers to investigate various factors that may influence their properties. One of these factors is nanomechanical stability, which plays an important role in the self-assembly of Aβ and possibly other proteins. This stability is also likely to be related to cell toxicity. In this work, we compare the mechanical stability of Aβ-tetramers and fibrillar structures using a structure-based coarse-grained (CG) approach and all-atom molecular dynamics simulation. Our results support the evidence for an increase in mechanical stability during the Aβ fibrillization process, which is consistent with in vitro AFM characterization of Aβ42 oligomers. Namely, using a CG model, we showed that the Young modulus of tetramers is lower than that of fibrils and, as follows from the experiment, is about 1 GPa. Hydrogen bonds are the dominant contribution to the detachment of one chain from the Aβ fibril fragment. They tend to be more organized along the pulling direction, whereas in the Aβ tetramers no preference is observed.
Start page
7628
End page
7637
Volume
125
Issue
28
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Bioquímica, Biología molecular Nano-procesos
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85111224513
PubMed ID
Source
Journal of Physical Chemistry B
ISSN of the container
15206106
Sponsor(s)
We thank Ho Anh Kiet for his kind help in low-pH simulations. A.B.P. acknowledges financial support from the National Science Centre, Poland, under Grant 2017/26/D/ 504 NZ1/00466, the grant MAB PLUS/11/2019 from the Foundation for Polish Science, and also gratefully acknowledges the computing provided by the Jülich Supercomputing Centre on the supercomputer JURECA at Forschungszentrum Jülich. M.S.L. was supported by the National Science Centre in Poland (Grant 2019/35/B/ST4/02086). T.T.M.T., L.T.M.T., and H.L.N. acknowledge financial support from the Department of Science and Technology at Ho Chi Minh City (Grant 07/2019/HD-737 KHCNTT), Vietnam. N.H.L. was funded by Vingroup Joint Stock Company and supported by the Domestic Master/PhD Scholarship Programme of Vingroup Innovation Foundation (VINIF), Vingroup Big Data Institute (VINBIGDATA), code VINIF.2020.TS.92. Computer resources were supported by the PL-GRID infrastructure and the TASK supercomputer center in Gdansk, Poland.
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus