Title
Evidence of Orientation-Dependent Early States of Prion Protein Misfolded Structures from Single Molecule Force Spectroscopy
Date Issued
01 September 2022
Access level
open access
Resource Type
journal article
Author(s)
Raspadori A.
Vignali V.
Murello A.
Giachin G.
Samorì B.
Tanaka M.
Zuccheri G.
Legname G.
Universidad de California
Publisher(s)
MDPI
Abstract
Prion diseases are neurodegenerative disorders characterized by the presence of oligomers and amyloid fibrils. These are the result of protein aggregation processes of the cellular prion protein (PrPC) into amyloidal forms denoted as prions or PrPSc. We employed atomic force microscopy (AFM) for single molecule pulling (single molecule force spectroscopy, SMFS) experiments on the recombinant truncated murine prion protein (PrP) domain to characterize its conformations and potential initial oligomerization processes. Our AFM-SMFS results point to a complex scenario of structural heterogeneity of PrP at the monomeric and dimer level, like other amyloid proteins involved in similar pathologies. By applying this technique, we revealed that the PrP C-terminal domain unfolds in a two-state process. We used two dimeric constructs with different PrP reciprocal orientations: one construct with two sequential PrP in the N- to C-terminal orientation (N-C dimer) and a second one in the C- to C-terminal orientation (C-C dimer). The analysis revealed that the different behavior in terms of unfolding force, whereby the dimer placed C-C dimer unfolds at a higher force compared to the N-C orientation. We propose that the C-C dimer orientation may represent a building block of amyloid fibril formation.
Volume
11
Issue
9
Language
English
OCDE Knowledge area
Bioquímica, Biología molecular
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85138753174
Source
Biology
ISSN of the container
20797737
Source funding
Human Frontier Science Program
Sponsor(s)
The authors acknowledge financial support from the Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) under project “Characterization of conformational space in prion proteins using single-molecule techniques” (ref. RGP0010/2011).
Sources of information: Directorio de Producción Científica Scopus