Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 16, 2026

Monitoring Protein Aggregation Kinetics In Vivo using Automated Inclusion Counting in Caenorhabditis elegans
Published on: December 17, 2021
Glycine residues appear to be evolutionarily conserved for their ability to inhibit aggregation
Claudia Parrini1, Niccolò Taddei, Matteo Ramazzotti
1Dipartimento di Scienze Biochimiche, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Viale Morgagni 50, 50134 Firenze, Italy.
Abstract:
Six glycine residues of human muscle acylphosphatase (AcP) are evolutionarily conserved across the three domains of life. We have generated six variants of AcP, each having a glycine substituted by an alanine (G15A, G19A, G37A, G45A, G53A, and G69A). Three additional variants had Gly45 replaced by serine, glutamate, and arginine, respectively. The mutational variants do not, on average, have a lower conformational stability than other variants with substitutions of nonconserved residues. In addition, only the G15A variant is enzymatically inactive. However, all variants, with the exception of the G15A mutant, form amyloid aggregates more rapidly than the wild-type. Dynamic light-scattering experiments carried out under conditions close to physiological confirm that aggregate formation is generally more pronounced for the glycine-substituted variants. Apart from the glycine at position 15, all other conserved glycine residues in this protein could have been maintained during evolution because of their ability to inhibit aggregation.
Related Concept Videos
Conserved Binding Sites
Binding sites are often located in large pockets, and if their location on a protein’s surface is unknown, it can be predicted using various approaches. The energetic method computationally analyses the...
Protein Folding
Protein Structure Is Critical to Its Biological Function
Proteins perform a wide range of biological functions such as catalyzing chemical reactions, providing...
Protein Folding
Amino acids
Protein Folding Quality Check in the RER
Amyloid Fibrils
Amyloid deposits were observed as early as 1639 in the liver and the spleen. In 1854, Rudolph Virchow performed iodine staining, normally used to...

