TitleMonitoring site-specific conformational changes in real-time reveals a misfolding mechanism of the prion protein.
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication2019
AuthorsSengupta I, Udgaonkar J
JournalElife
Volume8
Date Published2019 Jun 24
ISSN2050-084X
Abstract

During pathological aggregation, proteins undergo remarkable conformational re-arrangements to anomalously assemble into a heterogeneous collection of misfolded multimers, ranging from soluble oligomers to insoluble amyloid fibrils. Inspired by fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) measurements of protein folding, an experimental strategy to study site-specific misfolding kinetics during aggregation, by effectively suppressing contributions from inter-molecular FRET, is described. Specifically, the kinetics of conformational changes across different secondary and tertiary structural segments of the mouse prion protein (moPrP) were monitored independently, after the monomeric units transformed into large oligomers O, which subsequently disaggregated reversibly into small oligomers O at pH 4. The sequence segments spanning helices α2 and α3 underwent a compaction during the formation of O and elongation into β-sheets during the formation of O. The β1-α1-β2 and α2-α3 subdomains were separated, and the helix α1 was unfolded to varying extents in both O and O.

DOI10.7554/eLife.44698
Alternate JournalElife
PubMed ID31232689
PubMed Central IDPMC6590988
Grant ListJC Bose Fellowship / / Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology /
IYBA / / Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology /