Biophysical Society Thematic Meeting - October 25-30, 2015

Polymers and Self Assembly: From Biology to Nanomaterials

Tuesday Speaker Abstracts

Biophysics and Structural Biology of Neurodegeneration: The Case of Alpha-Synuclein Claudio Fernandez National University of Rosario, Argentina No abstract

Transthyretin-Related Diseases: From the Patient to the Protein Debora Foguel Medical Biochemistry Institute, Brazil No abstract

Protein Misfolding Pathway Probed by Solution and Solid-State NMR Mônica Santos de Freitas . Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Amyloidosis is a clinical dysfunction caused by extracellular accumulation of proteins that are normally soluble in their original structure, but suffered structural modifications generating insoluble and abnormal fibrils that impair the proper functioning of tissues. Although many challenges have been overcoming in the field of amyloidosis many questions are still waiting for answers. The limitation of many techniques approaches applied to study fibrillar formation has slowed the advances in the understanding of how soluble proteins suffer conformational changes that result in aggregation. In this way, solid-state NMR has been pointed out as a good tool to improve the knowledge about formation of fibers and aggregates. Solid-state NMR spectroscopy of proteins has undergone a great improvement due to the recent development of methods for resonance assignments, distance measurements and determination of torsion angles. The resolution has increased due the higher static magnetic fields, improved decoupling techniques and higher Magic Angle Spectroscopy (MAS) frequencies. These advances were obtained due to the development of several strategies for 15N and 13C proteins assignments in the last years. In this work we are interested to evaluate the pathway involved in fibril formation, following structural features that could indicates how soluble proteins undergo conformational changes that result in aggregation. The combination of Solution and Solid-State NMR has been a valuable tool to get informations concerning the first steps regarding the misfolding pathway.

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